It’s eight years since one of late Irrfan Khan’s most successful films Hindi Medium was released. Irrfan + Social Issue, bound to work. He was known to be a thinking actor with very definite views of politics and culture.
The trauma that parents face is alchemized in Hindi Medium into something smile-inducing and heartwarming, something quite magical in its ability to hit us where it hurts the most without damaging our sense of self-worth. Not that director Saket Choudhary trivializes the pain of parenting, as it crosses the hurdles of schooling protocol.
To his credit in Hindi Medium, director Saket Chowdhary does not allow proceedings to get preachy, screechy, or downright hysterical. Most issue-based films can’t help lecturing down on the audience. Saket eases you into the life of a terribly endearing couple—lovable with all their whims, excesses, and fancies, Armaan and Armanis – played by Irrfan Khan and Saba Qamar. Together, Irrfan and Saba make the couple’s journey through the amazing contradiction and anomalies of the schooling system look not only credible and real but also very engaging. The writing is sharp-witted and the verbal exchanges are topped with an extra layer of spice to drive in the point.
Irrfan looks so married to Saba, it is not funny. His sexual cravings and his ceaseless adoration of a wife who is often unreasonable, stubborn, and manipulative are remarkably subdued yet savage. The way he picks on her words to get his way in an argument, or inversely, the way she manipulates his thoughts and words to her own advantage, are lingering evidence of some slyly skilled writing that secretes wisdom about marital tricks that couples play on one another, not to betray or cheat on the spouse. But just to keep the spirits high in marriage.
And watch out for the grossly underused, monstrously talented Deepal Dobriyal. His turn as an economically challenged but forever cheerful parent would make the most frosty heart melt.
Ditto the film. Hindi Medium is never weighed down by tedium. It breezes through a difficult satirical terrain with a nose for the sunnier side of everyday drudgery.
It would be unfair to reveal more in this astutely woven yarn on the adventures of a rather wise child’s parents in gyan-dom. Suffice it to say, director Saket Choudhary is all through on firm ground as he negotiates his way through the contradictory pulls and pushes of an education system that fosters duplicity and encourages complicity with corrupt elements.
The incidents and anecdotes fill up the spaces not just in the narrative but also in the audiences’ hearts.
While Irrfan is in fine fettle, making light of and shining bright on what is essentially a very serious social issue, and displaying comic timing that Govinda would envy (if only he was around to envy anyone) Saba Qamar succeeds in being her very accomplished co-star’s support system without sweating it out in the dramatic scenes. But her presence is not as bankable as one expected. Nonetheless, she holds her place in front of the bang-on Khan. And that’s saying a lot.
Among the female actors, it’s the neglected Tillotama Shome who shines as a school-admission counselor. Her attitude of superciliousness towards the couple from Chandni Chowk who have migrated to Vasant Vihar to seem elitist, is deliciously vituperative. But Amrita Singh as an evil school principal hyperventilates through a sketchy role.
Also, while we are on the female characters, why is the actress Swati Das, playing Deepak Dobriyal’s wife, pasted with black polish? Isn’t this stereotyping of the poor as dark-skinned out of character in a film that successfully demolishes many sacred cows and wholeheartedly questions the imbalances in our social and educational system with a hefty dose of humanism and humour?
Hindi Medium is a well-told parable of middle-class aspirations, scattered with moments that every parent would recognize with a combination of pleasure and dread. It is a solid weekend entertainer with a message for every parent who has ever suffered the traumatic jitters of preparing to get a child admitted into school.
When he had won the first of many awards for Hindi Medium there was no sign of illness, only a feeling of gathering expectations and rightful pride as he said to me, “Hindi Medium has been able to crack the magic of marrying content with popularity. I am happy that the bridge has been crossed from ‘ critic’ to ‘popular’ on my own terms. I didn’t have to go the so-called massy route. I must tell you, though I won for Hindi Medium even for the Qarib Qarib Singlle role, I was nominated for the popular category as well.”
Then, destiny took a sharp, unexpected swerve.
