Movie Review: ‘Buddha in a Traffic Jam’ Courts Controversy
Towards the end of Buddha in a Traffic Jam, the narrative seems to slip.
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Can you appreciate a film even if you might vehemently disagree with the politics that it espouses? That’s the question that most of you will have to reflect on if you plan to watch this week’s newest release, Buddha in a Traffic Jam. Director Vivek Agnihotri himself called it a very “controversial film”.
Going by the ruckus it created, with various places attempting to stop the screening, he might just be right.
We often argue about how politics should be kept away from art. How the artist’s vision need not be sanctioned by the prevailing political establishment or the majority view. But sadly, in the political landscape of our country this argument is very conveniently being bent depending on what side of the ideological prism you wish to view it from.
If students in JNU and Jadavpur University have a right to voice their views without being branded anti-national or criminal, if in Haider, Vishal Bhardwaj can weave a story where he practically shows terrorism and military infiltration in Kashmir to be a figment of one’s imagination, why does the supposed “anti-left” ideology of the director be the sole reason to oppose a film?
Buddha in a Traffic Jam is divided into 10 chapters that seamlessly flow into each other, barring a few jarring instances. It’s 2014, we are painstakingly told.
“A culture is made or destroyed by its articulate voices” writes Vikram Pandit, as he starts an online petition to protest against the brutalities of the moral police. Taking a cue from the actual Pink Chaddhi campaign after the infamous Mangalore pub attack, the movie shows Vikram buoyant after his successful “Pink Bra” campaign, making animated speeches about the need for a social revolution. Use your “minds as arms and thoughts as ammunition”, he bellows, asking educated, uncorrectable youth to take charge and change the skewed dimensions of power in our country.
Arunoday Singh as the cigarette-smoking hunk with a heavy baritone voice, plays his character with surprising ease and aplomb. His sounding board is his teacher, Professor Batki, who keeps talking about the outdated nature of socialism and how corruption is actually a catalyst for growth.
We then meet Batki’s wife (Pallavi Joshi) who runs a Potter’s club to help aadivasis carve out a livelihood for themselves. This charity organisation soon lands into trouble as government aid stops, owing to an intelligence report which suggests that the funds meant for poor adivasis are actually getting diverted to fund the violent Naxalite movement. Vikram is then set the task of creating a profit-making business model for the Potter’s club. But once he roots out the middlemen and suggests a proposal that would get the money directly to the adivasis, Professor Batki gets upset.
The film pans over myriad issues such as moral policing, corruption, social inequality, crony capitalism, outdated socialism, and the plight of adivasis in the remotest parts of India. The only problem is that director Vivek Agnihotri seems to be scratching only the surface of the problems, when instead he should be dwelling on the various complexities. In this respect, post-interval, things improve and the treatment is more skilful.
Pallavi Joshi is brilliant and her soulful rendition of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Chand Roz has a lilting quality to it. Anupam Kher too matches his pitch to the demands of his character. However, Vikram’s cigarette-smoking friend Pooja (Anchal Dwivedi) and Mahi Gill stick out as sore thumbs. The hold on the narrative seems to slip when, nearing the end, Vikram is shown running hysterically as he imagines faces painted red trying to stifle him. The accompanying paranoia fails to make an impact.
A film ideally is to be judged on its aesthetic parameters and not by its linkages to certain ideological views. What goes on in a film creates its own autonomous domain which is inviolable. Therefore film qua film is not to be regarded as parasitical on real life happenings. Keeping this in mind, Buddha in a Traffic Jam inspite of all its flaws is sill watchable and I would give it 3 Quints out of 5.