Night Vision in Talaash

MAJOR SPOILERS THROUGHOUT (also beware of the thread that follows)

In a way the search is a bit of a red herring. A set of key exchanges between the story’s haunted protagonist and his mysterious muse underscore this and in turn distil the essence of the film. Rosie sardonically reflects on how a girl can simply disappear without anyone caring enough to figure out what transpired and Suri frustratingly mutters that the key to the mystery is before him but he cannot see it. Even as the film maintains a mostly compact noir narrative focused on unraveling the mystery at hand it is also laced with a rich political subtext. The opening credits superbly set up these concerns. The fairly standard choice of using abstract compilation shots to introduce a major metropolis is certainly on display here but much more so is the decision to focus on specific figures, representatives of the city’s social substratum. So much of the film is about specters in every sense and this includes those anonymous characters glimpsed at the very beginning. The specters among us — those marginal lives not often seen or heard. Those always on the borders of vanishing. When we do not see those around us let alone engage with their lives we turn them into ghosts. There is a politics of disappearance. Suri’s blindness is ours.

Talaash is the second major production in consecutive years out of Bombay, following Dum Maaro Dum, that presents a viscerally dark portrait of India’s metropolitan underbelly and in doing so turns the page on a triumphalist contemporary imagining of the nation-state and its urban spaces. Both films use established Hollywood suspense formats to fashion vastly different narratives. A detailed comparison of the two is not possible here but some common elements might be highlighted. In each instance an ‘un-dead’ agent of the law, a character never having recovered from deep persona trauma and habituated to leading a spectral existence between life and death. A twilight zone of sorts which then enables each protagonist to begin an odyssey through a near-underworld metropolis with its carnivalesque blend of half-alive and half-dead souls, and a landscape populated with a lurid series of depictions and encounters. In each case the solution is right before the hero’s eyes and yet the haze of that world keeps it completely concealed. Personal loss finally is always a conduit through which a greater socio-political economy operates. Dum Maaro Dum is bleaker still. There is no moment of rebirth for the protagonist, no ultimate reconciliation with his demons. Death when it finally comes is not too disappointing and not entirely a stranger either. The film’s many threads get untangled at the end but there is no real closure. Talaash meanwhile allows its own hero a moment of catharsis and authentic revelation. Perhaps a happier life awaits him but the ending in this sense is just a chance and nothing more definitive. Conversations with ghosts do not easily lead to promised lands of inner peace.

Through all this the movie’s remarkable gender politics ought not to be missed. It is a work dominated by clearly-etched female characters. There are important male figures here without doubt but they are in almost every instance less interesting than their female counterparts. Suri is no exception to this rule. His own triangle involves a more knowing and emotionally better-calibrated spouse and the ethereal but ambiguous figure who keeps punctuating his odyssey and is of course the reason the entire plot comes about. Then there is Teimur, clearly a galvanizing element throughout the narrative and the one who performs the story’s truest act of charity by the end, in his own relationship with a wiser, more nuanced woman. Perhaps the only really happy couple of this world! But even among the lesser parts the women elicit greater empathy than the men. It is in this setting that the consequences of men and their politics is so starkly obvious. It is fitting that a brothel and its seedy environs are so crucial to the story. And at a parallel level a critique of ‘India Shining’ pervades the entire narrative. Not surprisingly a soft-spoken, clean-cut corporate male figure is in a way the ultimate villain here!

The visual registers of Talaash are most successful when the director moves away from the somewhat more realist interiors and surroundings of the apartment building and in the same vein the police station, both spaces of course necessary to the tale, and creates quite often an expressionist dreamscape through many of her night shots. Along these lines the exchanges between Suri and Rosie are often suffused with a brand of surreality. Finally the actual site of the key accidents is also appropriately creepy and though a bit more reliant on horror conventions manages to provide a near-mythic anchor for the film’s mystery to unfold. The atmospherics of this work are instantly seductive but are also equally in sync with the unease that animates so much of the narrative.

One might nonetheless quarrel with some of the decisions made. The film is much more purely focused on its central narrative in the first half. In the second half Kagti broadens her canvas a little bit to tie up all the loose ends but in doing so the subplots tend to shift attention a bit more than is perhaps optimal. More importantly the investigation at the heart of this film becomes a bit desultory. Simply dependent on Suri’s chaneling of his inner demons and his ability to keep running into Rosie. Much as the tragedy in his past might have been examined less expansively. It is certainly true that all of these elements add a much deeper layer of emotional resonance than would otherwise have been the case (here once again the DMD contrast is somewhat instructive). And without doubt these choices do not really unsettle the film in any significant way. However the leaner narrative in the first half keeps the balance just right because it is always singularly focused on the case. The second half needs many more ‘asides’ to get the job done. In a similar sense the songs in the earlier part of the film are very fluidly integrated while in the second they seem unearned at points. But again all of this never loosens the essential grip of the film right down to its climactic (admittedly ‘stock’) moment which creates the impact the story has been building up towards. A couple of rather cheesy moments beyond this point though were completely avoidable. First of all the ‘mermaid’ sequence that follows the final car crash (among other things Rosie swims with heels!) and then later on the rather implausible skeletal hand that turns up in the grave. These are not unimportant blemishes on a film otherwise very tastefully handled.

One might also have a grouse with Aamir’s performance. On the one hand he is very much in keeping with the mood of the film. He is a specter of sorts and his inaccessibility if not impenetrability are well-tuned to his part and the world he operates in. But even accounting for this there are moments involving his character that call for more nuance and range. His economy is wonderful in terms of setting up his character but Aamir is not quite able to breathe within that more constricted space. Compactness in a performance need not run the risk of monotone. This is a conviction performance by the actor and it is enough to hold attention but it lacks finer gradations at key points. Kareena’s conversely is arguably her best outing to date less so on account of superlative acting instincts and mostly because her current gesturality seems to find a fortuitous match in the character. A spirit who has seen everything and returned to exact a revenge might conceivably justify a level of complacency and invulnerability that Kareena’s more earthly characters elsewhere cannot. But she is the film’s scene stealer quite often. Talaash even otherwise is packed with effective performances. The brothel characters have more showy parts and are harder to miss on this score but Rani Mukherjee comes up with an appropriately quiet turn that is a well-considered counterpoint to Aamir’s own choices here.

True to its themes Talaash haunts the mind. I have been drawing parallels with DMD but these are the two major productions I have liked most in the last two years. Both represent skillful examples of how a rooted director attuned to the best global trends in the medium might fashion a very compelling work, using established genres and canons of film-making but also ‘localizing’ these towards more responsible ends. Talaash easily adds another chapter to the wonderfully luminous career of Aamir Khan over the last decade, it marks yet another milestone in his own very responsible choices over the same period. Reema Kagti’s is that rare major production out of contemporary Bombay that creates a genuine world. Irrespective of one’s eventual judgment it is a work to be absorbed and revisited.