Jhund Movie Review: Nagraj Manjule, Amitabh Bachchan join forces to kick the ball over the wall

Around the halfway point of Jhund, the street children narrate their stories to each other and an empathetic Vijay Borade (Amitabh Bachchan). Babu, the loudest and most boisterous of them all, kick starts the storytelling with the most compelling cold open. He says, fighting back his emotions with a forced smile, “No one has really asked me a simple ‘How are you?’ and since you are asking, I’ll tell you my story.” Then, we hear stories of the other kids and most of them have the common theme of trying to overcome being invisible among a sea of people. And then, in a masterstroke by filmmaker Nagraj Manjule, a banjo performance by one of the kids is used as a device to drown out the stories and we just look at them animatedly narrating their lives. We might not know the specifics of their stories, but we know how it starts and ends. We have always known them, but a lot of us never really paid heed to them. It is almost like we never heard past the din of our own lives to listen to the stories of the “others”. And what’s the music that is played on the banjo to drown out these stories? “Saare jahaan se acchha… hindustan hamaara…” Well… it is almost like Nagraj and his actors are asking out loud if it really is a Bharat that is ‘hamaara’? 

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Ankush Gedam, Akash Thosar, Rinku Rajguru

Director: Nagraj Manjule

Jhund is a biopic of sorts of Vijay Barse, who founded Slum Soccer at the turn of this millennium, in his attempt to rehabilitate the children of the jhoppadpattis, and wanted to show that sport is indeed the greatest leveller. In Jhund, however, the focus is on the children he coached rather than the coach himself. We are gradually acquainted with the life and times of Don (Ankush Gedam) and Co who are given the rawest of deals by life and the system. We see how they risk their lives running atop trains to steal coal. We see how a bunch of them resort to chain snatching and phone snatching. We see how being subjected to humiliation is a way of life, and even the faintest of retaliation is stamped out of them by the higher powers. In between all this, Amitabh Bachchan’s Vijay hands them a football and asks them to kick it around. The casting for these characters is brilliant because the non-actors breathe life into what are template characters often seen in underdog films. It is the novelty of seeing them play extensions of their reality that turns out to be the highlight of a film that does resort to cliches but knows how to cash in on them. This choice makes a lot more sense because the presence of Amitabh Bachchan already lends the film much-needed gravitas. Right from the moment he saunters into the film, we see him shadowing over it. So, both him and Nagraj purposefully downplay him, and barring an emotional meltdown at the courtroom in the final act, we have a rather restrained Amitabh Bachchan just nudging along things from the periphery rather than placing himself at the centre.

In fact, for a football film, there is actually very little actual football in the film. After the rather Chak De India-esque pre-interval sequence (it is a hoot) with the jhopadpatti team and the posh college team in the same neighbourhood, Nagraj decides to take the pedal off the gas. He decides to show how the othering of these communities robs them of things that are basic to the rest. Right from running from pillar to post for getting the required documents for being assigned a passport to escaping the suspicious and prying eyes of law enforcers who see these kids more as delinquents and less as… well, people with aspirations. 

Nagraj doesn’t really paint a glossy picture about the life and times of the people in the jhoppadpattis. There is no “our lives are in penury, but we lead fulfilling lives” trope that is often seen in such films made by less-sensitive filmmakers. There is the showcase of how a lot of these children resort to a path of crime and violence in these slums. But this matter-of-fact approach, enhanced by the visual language of DoP Sudhakar Reddy Yakkanti, isn’t without the gaze of sensitivity. Even the one kid who wants to grow up to become a murderer because he will gain respect is the one who talks his friend out of committing the same crime. These children are often shown that the grass is greener on the other side of the wall that separates them from the “developed” part of society. But they don’t see it that way because there is not even a hole in that proverbial wall to give them hope of a better tomorrow. But, when a football-sized hole is drilled through it courtesy their repeated kicks at it, the kids begin to dream. The romantic angle might seem far-fetched, but love, like dreams... has no logic. We have settled for far less convincing love stories in many star vehicles over the years, and more importantly, this angle isn't really that far-fetched. Even in this romantic angle, the guy's dreams have limitations. Imagine that. 

Jhund tries to show how fair opportunities, and a path with fewer obstacles are enough for the oppressed to make their way in this world. With a few telling scenes, Nagraj establishes how the othering of the oppressed happens with the slightest of things that slowly become a way of life rather than systemic oppression. In fact, every success, however minuscule it might seem, is something that happens through the efforts of the jhoppadpattis. Yes, the system comes to felicitate them at the last leg of their struggle, but till then, it remains a silent spectator, and at times, even a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. These struggles, coupled with the rousing score of Saket Kanetkar, and the thumping numbers of Ajay-Atul, add adrenaline to the already pumped up proceedings that lead to triumphs.
 
Unlike his previous works, Fandry and Sairat, Nagraj Manjule doesn’t really want to leave any open-ended questions or have any subtlety in his expositions in Jhund. Here, every single element is carefully explored and the machinations of it are laid open for unadulterated comprehension. Instead of pointing us towards the direction of awareness, Nagraj holds our hand and takes us along the tunnel, and shows exactly where the light is. He wants the ones who have reached the end to not completely block the light out for the ones who are still forced to struggle to make their way into the tunnel. The jhund will eventually make its way to the end, for sure… but the question is, do we stand by them, or against them?

Well... there is just one right answer.