Thu. Mar 28th, 2024
A still from Shanghai

If you take a look at Dibakar Banerjee’s filmography, right from Khosla Ka Ghosla to the 2020 anthology Ghost Stories, the stories have been socially relevant and audiences were quite surprised when Banerjee managed to write a story under the genre of horror which was more than a social film.

The characters he creates are quite relatable and also entertaining at the same time. And the style of filmmaking has been a visual representation with the use of metaphors be it an entertaining family drama in his debut which highlighted the dark side of land dealing and money.

A still from Ghost Stories

Love Sex Aur Dhoka was the one that portrayed the roots of India through three different stories be it related to the class system, or the online MMS scandals that have a wide market all across the nation. These all can be named under the brave style of filmmaking, voicing out against the sadistic elements of the society. But keeping all these films aside, we will be talking about an underrated piece by Banerjee, the 2012 film Shanghai which starred Abhay Deol, Emraan Hashmi, and Kalki Koechlin.

A still from Shanghai

The plot is no different here, the characters are a part of the socially weird society and they don’t realize it until these elements come knocking on their door harming their own people. The film follows the story in Bhatnagar where the backward and working class of the society resides and the place is ready to be swallowed by the State-sponsored International Business Park (IBP). In simple terms, it is the story of small housing colonies getting mapped by the business parks in the name of development which essentially results in the downgrading of people and an indirect shifting of a society.

Here, the scammers are rich capitalists while the morally inclined are bankrupt. The characters are also interesting a videographer who on the other hand shoots porn to earn extra bucks (Emraan Hashmi), a Tamil IAS officer who considers taking on a lucrative foreign assignment to close down a case (Abhay Deol) and a social activist and professor with a weakness for falling in love with his students (Prosenjit Chatterjee). No one is perfect, each one of them has flaws but that’s what makes this political thriller more engaging and innovative.

A still from Shanghai

Though in a land of fiction, Banerjee makes a stand portraying the scams and politics that goes within the name of development projects. Cinematographer Nikos Andritsakis too provides a fresh take on the same story as he drives us perfectly within peaceful protests and also the ones sponsored by corrupt capitalists creating violence. The songs are sarcastic too, hence this is what we can call an overall style of brave storytelling and filmmaking.

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