A Thursday Review: Yami Gautam's hard work failed in 'A Thursday' in an artificial attempt to hurt the system

Posted on 17th Feb 2022 by rohit kumar

I am watching the movie 'A Thursday' in Fatehpur Chaurasi, a town on the banks of an extinct river, miles away from Mumbai. This is a small part of Unnao district which has once been identified with creative people like Bhagwati Charan Verma, Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, KK Shukla, Govind Moonis. For the past few years, the district has been in the news for rapes of adolescent girls and women. Daughters keep dying. Politics goes on. Elections keep happening. Neither the water in the river stagnates nor the daughters can let their minds flow. The misguided people did not keep both of them anywhere. It doesn't even become an election issue. On social media, people again start counting votes of castes and religions by saying their words. If we talk about a big city like Mumbai, then people like 'A Wednesday' and 'A Thursday' also do something to wake up the system or the people. The system wakes up only after trying to lay down your life here in the capital. And, often the brunt of this late sleep break comes in the form of broken trust in the system. The film 'A Thursday' is an attempt to break this sleep.

 

What can a common man do after he has lost his trust in the system? Either he speaks his words on social media or complains to the office bearer of any organization or he sits down and straightens something out of frustration. Many people sit quietly with dismay. But, the film 'A Thursday' is the story of a young woman enraged by the system whose intention is to remove the filth in the ears of the system, make her hear the cries of the public, and remove the blindfold of justice and splinter on the surrounding white-collar people. have to be identified. Naseeruddin Shah's character did this work in 'A Wednesday' sitting on top of a multi-story building in silence. Yami Gautam's character is doing this work in a school of little kids. The similarity in the story of both is that the intention of both is to hit the system and make it accountable to the public. But, the director of the film 'A Thursday' is not Neeraj Pandey. Here the matter is in the hands of Behzad Khambata, whose thinking about the working of the governments, the shaking of the system is Mumbai.

 

Hindi cinema is shrinking into a shell. Now a director rarely travels from Delhi to Mumbai by sitting in a train. Nor is he able to write a story like 'Upkar' in this way. The stories are moving away from their audience. Audiences are moving away from Hindi cinema. They feel that when Mithun Chakraborty style film 'Pushpa the Rise' is to entertain only with baseless foot stories, then what is bad, at least it doesn't pretend to be intellectual cinema. Efforts to give the shape of parallel cinema to the pure masala film are becoming the weak link of Hindi cinema. Young viewers are getting bored of this. He talks about logic. The people of Hindi cinema want the audience to watch the film Dil Se. Movies make him mind-blowing.

 

The film 'A Thursday' is a film of that era in Hindi cinema in which the makers have started masquerading as women actors to carry the burden of the story. The thing about Kangana Ranaut is different, she has been carrying films on her shoulder alone and has been successful too. But, when he also considered this success as his right, then the matter started messing up. These accidents have happened with Deepika Padukone in 'Chhapaak' and 'Ghehraiyaan'. Perhaps that is why she is not getting the courage to make 'Draupadi'. Yami Gautam has taken this responsibility in the film 'A Thursday'. Well done Yami. But, the setting of this film, its filming, its script do not support him. They also suffer from not being able to get dry and moist according to the flow of the film. Their facial expressions are limited and the kind of theatrical performance that is required of such characters in front of the camera, a capable director could have done better than them.

 

 

Behzad Khambata is a promising director. Sound engineering was his initial profession in cinema. Then he went from assistant director to director. The story betrayed him in the film 'Blank' as well. Here too he was defeated in a half-baked script. The makers of Hindi cinema need to see the mood of their audience and the world of the Hindi-speaking audience. Too much imagination is also harmful and if gimmicks start appearing in the cinema then films like 'Guzaarish' and 'Padmaavat' also miss out on achieving the expected success. The film does not impress much technically either. The movement of the camera is seen in a fixed pattern. There is also a mismatch between sound and light. The characters of strong actors like Atul Kulkarni and Dimple Kapadia look hollow. These shortcomings of the film 'A Thursday' do not allow it to become a favorite film of this weekend.