Nishaanchi Movie Review: A merry medley that forgot to make its own film

Director	Anurag Kashyap
Cast	Aaishvary Thackeray, Monika Panwar, Vedika Pinto, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Kumud Mishra
Genre	Crime Drama
Running Time	176 minutes

Pretty close to the 'middle ground' in Anurag Kashyap's Nishaanchi, a delightfully sinister man starts hitting on his sister-in-law just minutes after his brother is sent to jail. He knows full well that his brother's prison journey is a one-way ticket. He says to his sister-in-law, "Make me tea." Fleetingly, the woman loses her agency (because women in Kashyap films can only lose their agency fleetingly), and she begins her grueling work—grinding jaggery on a stone mortar, the water gushing out like her blood. When the shackles are absent to stop the man's shamelessness, a fly settles down beside the cauldron. That fly instantly took me to a scene from Black Friday: when Aditya Srivastava's Badshah Khan realizes he's being fooled, and sees a dog owner teasing his dog with a ball that's just out of its reach. I was finding it hard to convince myself that these two metaphorical moments (20 years apart) were unrelated. A small but strong part of me was saying that AK deliberately designed that moment in Nishaanchi as an ode to Black Friday. This is the Kashyap Cinematic Universe (KCU), after all!

The justification (I will never again type “raison d’être”) for KKU’s existence is to satisfy the fans’ ravenous hunger for a Gangs of Wasseypur 3. If Kashyap’s thirst is to relive his glory days when “Keh Ke Lenge” had moved from screens to the streets, then that could be the secondary objective. And the tertiary reason is to channel all the cinephilia into a single cinematic work – a film that is of the cinephile, by the cinephile, for the cinephile. Just like Gulaal Mein Democracy Lager was “of, by, and for” powerful people. But when we're watching a movie, we don't have the time, reason, or inclination to wonder why this universe exists. We're too busy having fun with its inhabitants. A mix of characters where Tony Montana's neighbor is Raja Hindustani and his neighbor is Hawa Hawaii. If only the concept of overdose didn't exist.

The film has all these movie characters and references, but it borrows its soul mostly from Gangs of Wasseypur. Nishaanchi's biggest crime is that it runs on a borrowed soul. What should have been just for decoration has been made the foundation. Hat tips, odes, nudges, winks, glances are fun, but they can never sustain a film. Nishaanchi's stripped-down plot is flimsy, but that's not the real problem - the real problem lies in the abyss where the soul of the film should have been. It seems as if the film has been made only to serve nostalgia, and that is never enough.

Talking about the plot: Debutant Aishwarya Thackeray plays twins Babloo and Dabloo Singh. Both brothers grow up with a vengeance – to become predator and prey one day. The predatory twins have a loving relationship with Kanpur prison, as they spent their teenage years there avenging their father's death. The father, Jabardast Singh (named Kashyap style), is a wrestler who gets stabbed in the back before he can live his dream. Vineet Kumar Singh plays Jabardast, and he plays a fictionalized version of himself. Back to plot: Father dies, mother Manjari (Nishaanchi's) finds herself in a situation similar to that of Nagma Khatun from Wasseypur. After leaving jail, Bablu ignores his mother's advice and joins his uncle Ambika Prasad (who already had an eye on his mother). Here Bablu meets his love interest Rinku (Vedika Pinto), an orchestra dancer. Rinku is both his desire and his reckoning. Eventually, the twins and Rinku do together what Mohsina and Definite from Wasseypur 3 are doing in a parallel universe. And then Bablu returns to Kanpur jail. That's it, this is the plot.

Two things:

(1) If you remove cross-pollination, the plot becomes clearly visible.

(2) Did you spot it? Deewar, Mother India, Do Bigha Zamin, Ram Aur Shyam, Trishul, Silsila are all visible. Plus there are other films, dialogue odes, references – even the prelude of a song says: “Kaahein ki saala, Bollywood bina kauno zhindagi kaise jeeye?” And the lyrics of one song are a string of film titles – “Satyam Shivam Sundaram Apna Desh Dostana.” This is made for cinephiles.

Cinephilia of such detrimental proportions means the film's e-screenplay is full of hyperlinks. Example: When Babloo approaches Rinku, it feels like a scene from Gulaal. A desi beer bar shootout comes up, it feels like a mashup of Dev D and Danny Boyle. When Babloo shouts, it brings to mind “Hello Luke” from Star Wars. Black Friday has already been mentioned. And then I remembered That Girl in Yellow Boots because of an Oedipus complex reference. I started to think that maybe I was making unnecessary connections – like seeing a throwaway “Chai pe charcha” line and thinking that Kashyap was remembering Choked. I leave Bombay Velvet, Ugly, Raman Raghav 2.0 for you all.

But one thing that connects every solid Kashyap film — Dev D, Gulaal, Wasseypur, Velvet, Manmarziyaan — is the soundtrack. And Kashyap has a knack for turning music into a narrative device. Even in Nishaanchi, he stubbornly wants to deliver an encore. So stubborn that he sacrifices the narrative flow to force-fit songs that don't sound that strong. There's just one exception — the rackety "Film Dekho," which plays during the opening credits and brings wild applause. What's even more unusual is that a strong female performance is missing from a Kashyap film. Vedika Pinto doesn't shed her SOBO-coded air to convincingly become Karpati's orchestra dancer. Casting Monika Panwar (31) as Thackeray's mother, a close-to-30-year-old, seems even more stubborn. But Thackeray's experiment is a success—effective, earnest, and effervescent.