Bhakshak Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
There comes an age in most people’s lives, when one can either tactically get involved with a social cause, or look the other way. Both actions with actual consequences.
This film is a good reminder, ki fight or flight response mein joh moral decision lena baaki reh gaya tha, thoda soch lo.
When even the TINIEST power goes unchecked, kitna time lagta hai uske misuse mein? Aapki 20 apartment waali RWA ke Sharma uncle khud ko Pradhan mantri se kam thode hi na maante hain, kyunki opposition mein bhi zyada se zyada Gupta uncle aayenge, dono shaam ko baith kar saath mein cigarette peete hain wife se chhupkar. And when Sharma and Gupta are elevated to various little little designations in the systems made by sharmas, guptas and tyagis who came before them, tab jab koi zara saa pushback toh chhorein, savaal hi agar pooch le, ki yeh ho kya raha hai, all hell breaks lose. How dare you question the impunity folks like me have enjoyed for generations?
Koshish News proprietor and journalist Vaishali Singh ask one question, and before she knows it, she’s a full-blown activist, in the made-up town of Munnawarpur, Bihar.
If you remember the 2018 real-life crime that inspired Bhakshak, you better arm yourself with all the trigger warnings you know you will need. This story deals with sexual abuse, especially when minors are involved, the perpetrators are abusing victims and powers alike. The filmmaker, who just goes by Pulkit doesn’t care about lulling anyone into a false sense of comfort. The first scene occurs right before an assault has taken place, and right before a murder is about to.
He also wants you to know, that while names, places, and likeness have been changed, ALL of this, is very close to something that happened in real life. An unspeakable tragedy that saw very little follow-up in the national media. Calls were made for the CM to resign. An outrage cycle followed, and once something equally or more blasphemous came to the fore, all was forgotten.
In a post-truth world, even the dumbest of crap must be headlined “break silence on”, or “makes shocking revelations”. Article Khol ke padhoge toh it’s the 3rd of a popular movie talking about the three scenes they were in. Movie ka title trending hai, toh clicks ke liye KISI KA BHI interview ho, title mein khaufnaak word ek chahiye. Just like the words “woke”, “politically correct”, and “feminist”, the word “journalist” now means 100 different things. Vaishali, who initially doesn’t want to cover to the story sold to her by an informant, is painfully aware that she’ll need to find ways to make it “viral” on Twitter. Bhumi Pednekar knows a thing or two about using the Internet for good and for gain. The actor infuses Vaishali with a reality she has seen and experienced up close. Bheed, Afwaah, Badhai Do, and now this, it’s a treat to see characters come alive fiercely and unflinchingly behind Bhumi’s eyes.
Vaishali is every girl who’s family thinks she is too karntikaari. Through her, the film enters the story but also uses her to keep distance FROM it. She is not a police officer walking in slow motion here to save the day. She is a lone woman realizing in slow motion just how difficult and near impossible her job is. There is also commentary here about the ickiness of journalists BECOMING the story. By keeping Vaishali sort of naively unaware and in one step BEHIND the enemy, Bhakshak manages to focus more on the robustness of the layers of systemic indemnity she is up against. A situation where one can only dream of winning when you realize you’re out of options, with nothing more to lose.
This David vs Goliath tale is ominous but pressing. In a scene, a politically adjacent man says to another “aaj agar yeh chhota bhi kuch kar raha hai toh rokiye, chhota agar bada ho gaya toh kya kariyega”. They’re talking about Vishali and her colleage Bhaskar Sinha played by an incredible Sanjay Mishra who just be recording piece after piece on their mobile phones, emboldened by nothing but a blind sense of justice, are pushing through obstacle after obstacle by brute force. Another replies ki aurat hain aur journalist hain isliye ruka hua hoon. Neither of those being any real reasons that’s ever stopped anyone in power, ever.
A stupendous Aditya Srivastav is evil incarnate Bansi Sahu. He TOO is a journalist, publishes small circulation local newspapers and runs the NGO the film is set in. Again re-iterating the kind of journalism a country needs Bansi is pitted against Vaishali, the old guard that went un-challenged vs the new that faces nothing but challenges.
Bhakshak does hit you over the head over and over again with what its getting at. Honest journalism is good, predators are bad. Its all black and white, no grays. Like the America Ferrara monologue in Barbie, everything you hear are things you know well in 2024, but also things that bear repeating, especially in 2024. Kuch badalna hai toh awaaz uthaani hogi is not a new vibe, but perhaps is more important now than it was 4or 5 years ago. To drive this home though, Pulkit, with co-writer Jyotsana Nath and editor Zubin Sheikh tends to occassionaly flirt too dangerously with voyeurism. For the most part youre watching in horror, but in some bits you feel like the peeping tom.
But like LOOK at the films we are watching and giving our money willingly to. Toh joh audience ko aadat lagne lagi hai spoon feeding ki bilkul, untak reach karne ke liye 10 x the melodrama use karna padega toh padega. Is the writing simplistic? Yes. But is it effective? Also very much yes.
Now, the film’s director said in a promotional interview a few weeks ago, “mujhey lagta hai cinema na kuch bana sakta hai, na kuch bigaad sakta hai. Literature ki tarah hai, joh aadmi usko padhega, jaisa lagega waisa ho jaayega.” Bhumi Pednekar nodded along in agreement.
So, this film that was inspired by a real-life tragedy, seemingly comes from a place of pain, of wanting to see justice brought about, hoping for change, for a better society where the helpless have recourse, means and systems that protect them. And yet if the maker is convinced that the moving image, a medium of mass communication used and misused for 100s of years, is not an agent of change, positive OR negative, then does Bhakshak, a story specifically featuring people working toward bringing change, a story asking its viewers to be brave, is not asking for change itself? Are we to view as just entertainment? If Bhumi Pednekar looks straight into the camera, on a news channel, like Shahrukh did at the end of Jawan, and asks to you straigt ki “Doosro ke dard mein dukhi hona bhool gaye hain kya?”, do you not feel pain when others do?, is that not a scene asking for change? ki joh bigad gaya hai usko banaao, abhi bhi time hai jaag jaao? All stories have varying degrees of power and power must have purpose. Purpose ke bina waali power toh RWA ke Sharma uncle ke paas bhi hai, kya hi handpump ukhaad liya uska?
I find myself looking for these answers over and over again aajkal, agar aapko bhi chahiye, film stream ho rahi hai aaj se Netflix par, dekhein, aur bataayein.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10, Bhakshak is……1 shoutout to actor Durgesh kumar you KNOW when he shows up you know its about to get real good.
If you’d like me to show up here baar baar, video ke neeche joh subscribe hai, usko like karein. Sundance coverage abhi poori ho gayi hai, but coming soon, dispatches from the Berlin Film Festival! Subscribe if youd like to know more, my name is Sucharita, thank you for stopping by!
