The year hasn’t yet reached its bitter end but for some Hindi film fans, 2020 resembles a Madhur Bhandarkar movie being projected on endles...
The year hasn’t yet reached its bitter end but for some Hindi film fans, 2020 resembles a Madhur Bhandarkar movie being projected on endless loop on the walls of the quarantined apartment and the shuttered shopfronts of the pandemic-afflicted city.
The relentless fallout of Sushant Singh Rajput’s death by suicide on June 14, the subsequent allegations of murder and embezzlement, the claims of a “Bollywood drug mafia” that have led to the arrests of his girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty and her brother Showik Chakraborty and the interrogation of Deepika Padukone, Shraddha Kapoor and Sara Ali Khan in connection with a so-called narcotics racket – every new development resembles a plot twist from the average Bhandarkar conspiracy drama.
In the last decade, the director made his mark with a series of tales about moral turpitude in the media, the fashion world, the corporate boardroom and the prison system. His characters entered Manichean universes and were inevitably crushed by an array of degenerates, shysters and reprobates.
In 2012, Bhandarkar turned his attention to his own trade, contributing an entry to the well-stocked category of movies about the movies. Heroine portrays the downward spiral of an insecure and drug-addled movie star. Along the way, Heroine ladled out vinegary observations about Bollywood’s big bad ways. If you say...
