Tangential note on Fashion

(these views first appeared on NG)

Fashion is much better than I expected it to be. Quite engrossing from beginning to end and also it’s not as stereotypical as I expected it to be based on some of Bhandarkar’s other stuff. Kangana Ranaut is definitely a scene stealer here as some pieces on the film earlier suggested. But Priyanka ultimately has the job of carrying the film and she does this rather well.


Being obsessed with Bombay film history I found a moment in the film rather moving for reasons entirely ‘other’ to the film. There’s a scene where Priyanka Chopra is in a high rise looking out at a massive billboard with her on it. The site is Marine Drive. The way the shot has been set up it more or less mirrors the legendary moment in Deewar when Bachchan looks out of the window after becoming ’successful’ and pictures his past (walking with his mother and brother in a state of destitution on that very road when he first arrives in the city). An index of the distance traveled from the older India of Deewar [not ‘old’ because that India was ‘new’ in the 70s and that movement from the ‘Independence’ generation to the first post-Independence (or post-Partition) one is in many ways what films like Deewar or Trishul are about] to this new 90s and post-90s one of Fashion.

Where Bachchan sees his mother Priyanka Chopra sees herself. A measure perhaps of a greater narcissism (hardly surprising since consumer economies often go hand in hand with such).

By the way there’s a scene here where Bhandarkar also mocks himself. I thought this was a nice move.