Jalsa review – hit-and-run Bollywood drama speeds past social issues | Film
A younger woman will get run over in the beginning of Suresh Triveni’s Jalsa, a brutal occasion that brings to thoughts Paul Haggis’s Crash, and never in a great way. Identical to the painfully unsubtle Oscar winner, right here a automobile accident and coincidences throw a bunch of individuals from totally different backgrounds into tough dilemmas, forcing them to confront robust ethical questions.
Vidya Balan, who additionally stars in Triveni’s debut Tumhari Sulu, performs Maya Menon, a tough-as-nails reporter priding herself on her unwavering honesty. Her introduction means that the movie may be a female-driven character research, as Maya is torn between her work and her disabled son. However Jalsa then modifications gears dramatically, revealing that Maya is the driving force behind the ugly hit-and-run. To make issues worse, the younger woman is the daughter of Maya’s trusted cook dinner Ruksana (Shefali Shah), who has change into an integral a part of the household.
As Maya hides her horrible secret from Ruksana, the movie makes an attempt to make some half-hearted commentary on wealth inequality because it cuts forwards and backwards between swanky house condos and dirty working-class dwellings. However the critique is diluted as extra characters are built-in into the already overstuffed plot, every representing a selected social stereotype: corrupt cop, obstinate trainee and so forth. Like checking off objects on a grocery listing, Jalsa is extra involved in weaving collectively as many urgent points as potential, with out investing any analytical consideration to their causes.
It’s a disgrace, since Jalsa might have been an efficient two-hander for Balan and Shah, who’re superbly efficient within the uncommon moments that they get to share the display. As an alternative, what we have now is a baffling drama that claims little or no about both inequality or morality.
