Choke ‘n fluster!
Chalk N Duster
Director: Jayant Gilatar
Actors: Shabana Azmi, Juhi Chawla
Rating: *1/2
To be fair I had been fully forewarned about this one. Friend and fellow reviewer Rajeev Masand had seen this film before. He’d told me it was terrible, along the lines of “Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyon terrible”.
Now few, if anyone at all, has seen that Dunno Y movie on homosexuality, starring Helen and Zeenat Aman, which Rajeev was alluding to. But if you have, you would know right way why that comparison would’ve wholly whetted my appetite!
The beauty of walking into any movie with lowest expectations is you never find it all that bad in the first place. Initially, that is. This film is on the total rot in the education system in India, led by private enterprise and profit motive alone, which turns it into an equally exploitative and extortionist system—beginning from primary school level itself.
We’re looking at the scene in a private school in Mumbai. Divya Dutta plays a saas-bahu type wily headmistress (or no. 2 in the school admin). She’d played a similar role in another waste of an exposé on journalism called Monica (now that’s another one few have watched!).
Through Divya’s character we’re meant to get a sense of how merely looking at the bottom-line in a school’s balance sheet can lead to a race to the bottom, so far as teaching is concerned. She impresses the trustees enough to take over as the school principal.
She coerces her old teachers to always stand in class, threatens them into accepting all kinds of dictatorial rules, turns a Hindi adhyapak into a PT teacher etc. etc.
These teachers take all that punishment without saying a word. Because they’re sure they will never find another job I guess. And I’m thinking in my head, if these darpoke (scared), muted gurus really suffer from such low self-worth then maybe the new principal is right in ensuring that these ‘mediocres’ leave anyway!
Shabana Azmi plays a competent, experienced math teacher. The first time we see her on screen, she’s teaching the BODMAS rule from numbers and algebra to her students chorusing aloud, ‘Bodmas, Bodmaas, Bodmas’ (as if it were the song ‘Commando, Commaando, Commando’ from the Mithun B-film). I don’t know how that can improve your understanding of the ‘order of mathematical operations’, singing in a group can certainly make you a better singer.
But don’t get me wrong. Shabana as Vidya does stand tall—looking every bit some of the better math teachers you’ve ever had. She reminded me of my neighbourhood math tutor Mrs Vishwanath: old, sweet, caring, and plainly devoted to her job and her students’ careers. Vidya gets fired. The chemistry teacher (Juhi Chawla) takes up her cause.
From here onwards, what you watch is an incredulous story that’s certainly been scripted on the go, with multiple climaxes and changes being made on the fly. There’s no point going into detail. But I will be revealing no national secret or spoiling any of your fun if I revealed that a fair quarter of this picture is a full episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati where, for some odd reason, a math teacher and a chemistry teacher are tested on their knowledge of history, geography, acronyms, religion, cinema, military and other useless trivia (as all trivial usually is).
“It is a Jayant Gilatar film”. I hadn’t seen this picture’s promo, but been hearing those words on radio over a week. Everyone is allowed their vanity. A filmmaker definitely is. To give it to the director, or perhaps the producers, they’ve managed to assemble quite a cast. Besides the ones I have already mentioned, you watch Richa Chadha in a TV journo’s role, Rishi Kapoor comes in as well, as do Jackie Shroff, Girish Karnad….
Never mind the story that’s complete hogwash. The movie means well. But how about even trying to shoot it better? Poorly lit, grainy in parts, this one looks like it’s been filmed on iPhone 6. Or maybe Blackberry. Okay okay, no knock on Blackberry!
Mayank Shekhar’s new book NAME PLACE ANIMAL THING (Stuff about India and pop-culture that make me go, ‘You’re kidding me!’) is available for pre-order on Amazon