Afrail, middle-aged print journalist is desperately looking for a front-page breaking story at a time when news is going digital. His name is Joy (Manoj Bajpayee) but there is nothing joyful about his life. He has an unhappy marriage with his wife Shweta (Shahana Goswami). He does not come home for days. In a scene, he uncomfortably makes love in a car with his junior, Varsha (Parvati Sehgal). Joy’s character is loosely inspired from the life of slain journalist Jyotirmoy Dey, who was more dramatically explored in Hansal Mehta’s web series Scoop. Here, it's more existential. There’s more focus on the absurdity of the investigation that Joy engages in to get to the truth. He is not driven by a journalistic vigour of exposing a scam for greater good, and the filmmaking does not imbibe any sense of urgency to his journey, either. There are no unexpected twists and turns, or any breaking news to save the day. The only thing that’s twisted is Joy’s fate; the only thing which breaks is his nose. This is a Kanu Behl film, after all.
With his last film Agra, Kanu explored the dark realities of young, hormonal men in North India. There is a raw matter-of-factness in his storytelling which leaves a metallic taste in the mouth. He doesn’t want to create a seamless cinematic experience; rather, he wants to jolt. It takes the shape of some disturbingly violent sequences in his debut Titli (2014), where characters unflinchingly slam hammers on each other. That way, Despatch is not as obviously provocative and audacious as his last two films. Rather, it unfolds over a laborious length, with scenes that feel unending and an investigative thriller-like plot that refuses to behave like one.
Directed by: Kanu Behl
Starring: Manoj Bajpayee, Shahana Goswami, Rituparna Sen, Parvati Sehgal, Mamik Singh, Nikhil Vijay
Streamer: ZEE5
Joy does everything that is demanded of the genre. Being a veteran journalist, he has his foot in every nook and corner of the city. He works covertly with the police and trails them to gangster dens, only to almost get killed in the ensuing gunfire. In a hilarious scene, he enters a company building pretending to be the auditor so as to collect evidence for a scam he is uncovering. It unfolds with him running from door to door, evading security guards through his awkward maneuvers. Joy feels almost like an accidental protagonist of the film, with how indifferently he is treated by writers Ishani Banerjee and Kanu. Joy seems to have come right out of the mundane world of French existentialists Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre in terms of the perpetual dryness that he carries. Manoj brings out his astounding desperation and pent-up frustration by imbibing an unusual physicality. He runs without a sense of speed, stands without appearing to be at ease and conjures up a concocted smile each time he wants to. He populates every frame of the film, lets go of his vanity and becomes part of the space he is in. His performance carries a heavy weight of a long life led in a metropolis.
The film becomes more like a character study of Joy as the camera observes him from a distance, not giving us moments to empathise. Kanu makes the narrative linger a lot without having a central idea to fall back on. A long, roughly enacted and uncomfortable sex scene between Joy and Shweta becomes a gateway to understand the sheer lack of love in their relationship. Kanu brings a decisive sense of ugliness to these scenes as the camera sneaks closer to the character’s faces as they try to snuggle and kiss. It goes beyond what is expected, often breaking the cinematic illusion. As a result, the experience does become cumbersome and difficult to sit through, for how seemingly little we are invested in the characters. It also irks to see the sub-plot of Joy’s relationship with his wife to have been left incomplete after a range of compelling sequences that underline their toxic complexity. Instead, there are newer characters introduced in the last hour, leaving more doors opened. It edges to become all the more chaotic as it reaches the final act to the protagonist’s death, which is not pitiable.
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