By Hindustan Times
Direction: Dibakar Banerjee
Actors: Emraan Hashmi, Abhay Deol, Prasenjit Chatterjee, Kalki Koechlin
Rating: ****
The Shanghai within the title isn't a city. It’s a state of being, a metaphor, an aspirational fantasy. The story, adapted from Vassilis Vassilikos’s novel Z (earlier made into an Oscar-winning film, also named Z, by Costa-Gavras), is ready in an unnamed town in India. The powers that be speak of constructing town into Shanghai — a glittery city brimming with housing blocks, flyovers and gleaming office towers. But ‘progress’ comes at a worth. It involves dislocation, corruption, moral compromise, murder. Shanghai is a terrifying portrait of the state of the nation.
An activist leader, played by Prosenjit Chatterjee, is mowed down by a truck on a crowded street. The executive minister institutes an enquiry. The bureaucrat in charge, TA Krishnan (played by Abhay Deol), is predicted to toe the official line and declare it an accident. But he starts to dig deep.
Aided by the leader’s aide, Shalini (Kalki Koechlin), and part-time pornographer Joginder Parmar (Emraan Hashmi), Krishnan discovers that it was, of course, murder.
Writer-director Dibakar Banerjee and co-writer Urmi Juvekar tell this brutal story with minimal drama. There may be nothing high-pitched here, except Kalki’s one-note performance. Instead we have now an exact skewering of politicians, bureaucrats, lumpen party workers and the footsoldiers who do the dirty work. Even the leader has chinks in his armour — he’s an adulterer with a watch for attractive students.
Shanghai warms up slowly, so that you must have patience — especially within the first half. However the pleasure of the film is within the details. So Joginder saves Shalini’s number on his cellphone with the name ‘dreamgirl’, spelt d-r-e-e-m, and his boss, who has an incriminating recording, roughly asks her: Who're you to the accidented man?
Dibakar slyly finds flashes of humor where there are none — so in the course of the tense climax, we inadvertently get a glimpse of Joginder’s porn film, that's both desperately funny and sad.
The ensemble cast is wonderful — from Deol, because the straight-arrow Tamilian IAS officer who finds the strength to be defiant, to Hashmi, whose days of being dismissed as a ‘kissy boy’ are clearly over. Joginder’s cheerfully cheesy world falls apart in a heartbeat. Hashmi imbues him with a startling innocence or even nobility.
Shanghai doesn’t provide the relaxation of answers or happy endings. However it forces us to invite urgent questions. It's the best Hindi film I’ve seen this year. I strongly urge you to find time for it.
