Jersey Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
Nearly everyone I know has gone through or is currently experiencing an existential crisis in their mid-30s.
Oh, you’ve just turned 30 or what? It's about to go downhill, very fast.
Hey, y’all! my name is Sucharita and right now I'm going to be talking about Gowtam Tinnanuri’s Hindi language adaptation of his own Telugu film, “Jersey”. Starring Mrunal Thakur and Shahid Kapoor.
According to the director himself, “Jersey” is an attempt to explore the trajectory and future promises of late bloomers. People who decide to change track to start afresh at an age with a general social construct deems to be delayed, which I assume is 10 times more difficult when it comes to sports.
As a kid, when I would hear about retirement announcements of cricketers like Mohd, Azharuddin, or Navjot Singh Sidhu in their 30s I’d wonder 30 ki age mein RETIRE kaise koi ho sakta hai, my father is older than these two who toh nahi retire huye abhi. The concept of government jobs, steady income slash pension, etc. It’s fascinating and oddly sad at the same time.
Jersey dives into this fascinating/sad space head-first through a mostly sad and self-sabotaging protagonist. Shahid Kapoor is ‘Arjun Talwar’, a 36-year-old who’s all but given up on himself. It's been 10 years since he’s left cricket and subsequently fired from his govt job on charges of corruption, a sub-plot the movie doesn’t go into. What the film does instead spends time on, using flashbacks, is a love story between ‘Arjun’ and ‘Vidya’, two people from different societies, in love against all odds.
Forward to the 90s, ‘Arjun’ and ‘Vidya ’are now unhappily married and he only cares about the happiness of his young son, who also aspires to be a cricketer. ‘Arjun’ sees himself and his unfulfilled dreams in his kid ‘Kittu’ (was he named after a cricket Kit?), and the shame he feels on realizing his son might give up on him as his superhero if he doesn’t come through. All fathers are superheroes until proven otherwise, right?
Now, despite claims that the film is about second chances, to me Jersey was about these two subplots, more than the actual cricket, the sport feeling more incidental. Let me explain.
One — How two people fall out of love. Fans of ‘‘Marriage Story’’ might recall scenes from that film where Scarlett Johanssen and Adam Driver argue and then almost make up only to end up fighting again, slowly unraveling before our very eyes as Noah Baumbach talks to a side of you that has experienced these conflicting emotions in a romantic relationship.
In ‘‘Jersey’’, Shahid Kapoor and Mrunal Thakur’s characters too are stuck in the purgatory between feeling love for each other and being in love with each other. One battling invisible mental demons, while the other financial pressures of being the sole earner in a 3-person household, the two are at a point where the relationship just isn’t working, due to both of them working hard to keep themselves from falling completely apart.
In one scene, Arjun has his cricket kit packed on a coffee table, telling Vidya he can't deal with this life anymore and she has to let him go, seeking permission to be a bad person, to do what is wrong, walk away from his family, for his own catharsis. It’s a sensitive, fragile, personal admission of desire from a man whose big shtick so far has been “Don’t need your sympathy. I’m okay”. Shashank Tere’s production design enhances the overall effect of this scene and I was deeply affected by the vulnerability at display
Second, the father-son relationship and how that begins to change once your son takes you up on your offer of becoming friends. The child understands power dynamics but also has been instructed to ask for anything anytime. So how do you explain “means” and “money” to a child with sympathy for their limited understanding of the world? When a kid asks for something, how do you not tear yourself and everything around you apart looking for it?
‘‘Jersey’’ lekin in dono emotions mein thoda time ruk-kar, side mein se aage nikal jaati hai dheerey dheerey. We don’t get to know ‘Kittu’, played by the same actor as the Telugu version, Ronit Kamra. A child’s curiosity is wild and complicated, which despite being one of the triggers for Arjun’s metamorphosis, is only approached from an adult, top-angle POV, metaphorically. Similarly, with Vidya, Mrunal Thakur isn’t provided any room to do a lot except look unsatisfied and stressed. She’s a natural, gifted actor, and I really do wish to see a LOT more of her, in roles where her character doesn’t just exist to goad the love interest into winning.
When Jersey moves towards the cricket in the second half and begins to follow familiar, oft-repeated tropes of the underdog sports story, fatigue begins to set in, and any scene without the incredible Pankaj Kapoor in it takes a turn towards predictable and tedious. Shahid Kapoor as a cricketer is a very attractive sight and the actor plays the sport extremely convincingly, if always a little too ‘Kabir Singh’ after anger-management style.
But when he allows himself to be vulnerable, around his son, or selectors, or a shop asking for a discount, when the perennial squinting-in-the-sun scowl goes away, you're reminded of the gut-wrenching dramatic effect the actor is capable of generating. It’s like the character and the actor are both too tightly wound to let any real emotion through long enough to have a sustained impact.
‘‘Jersey’’ is many small movies rolled into one, gallantly attempting to bring all of them to one conclusion. Copout or logical? You decide. Gowtam Tinnanuri’s ‘‘Jersey’’ is in theatres starting today.
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