Revisiting Anubhav Sinha's Anek: Of Burnt Bridges and Tall Fences

"Peace is a subjective hypothesis," says a character an hour into Anek. This dialogue — weighty and impactful but also pretentiously literary — defines the core of the film. Much like this line, director Anubhav Sinha's approach to the story he's telling is heavy-handed and borderline incoherent but also immensely thought-provoking and unsettling.

Set in an unnamed state in the "Northeast", Anek tells the story of many different Indias. Aman a.k.a. Joshua (Ayushmann Khurrana), an undercover agent assigned with the duty of maintaining peace between the region's numerous separatist groups and the Indian government, finds himself at crossroads when he begins to develop feelings for Aido (Andrea Kevichüsa) — a boxer marginalized because of her identity — and empathy for the people of the state. Most notable of all the groups Aman is trying to control is one led by Tiger Sangha — a revolutionary-like figure with a not-so-clean track record of past activities. However, after Johnson, another separatist group, suddenly becomes active, a spark of unrest and accumulated resentment begins to brim throughout the region.

Sinha, whose three consecutive films before Anek — Mulk, Article 15 and Thappad — were some of the finest explorations of the social issues that plague the cultural fabric of our country, has a keen eye for nuance. However, unlike those films, over here the layers in his narrative aren't structured coherently enough. There are too many subplots jostling for attention. The film has a lot to say, and that is evident in the rushed screenplay, which sacrifices emotional connect at the altar of spreading awareness. There are long expositionary dialogues, providing insight into the region's socio-political situation. However, the information overload weighs down the film's crux — dampening the impact of its thesis-like message, which is then conveniently put forth with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

Anek's first half is especially frustrating to sit through because it isn't always easy to keep up with the proceedings. I'm all up for non-linear screenplays but Anek treats the chaos in the narrative with chaotic storytelling. Strangely enough, the writing by Sinha, Sima Agarwal, and Yash Keswani is both static and hurried. Much of it feels like a basic checkbox — covering the issues that scar the region — being ticked off as the narrative proceeds, with many scenes veering on pointless because of the sloppy editing by Yasha Ramchandani. Who is Aman? Why should we care for him? Do his noble intentions (which aren't always entirely noble) make him a compelling protagonist? Backstories aren't always necessary if the subtext is rich enough to convey the character's psyche, but in this case, the closest insight we get into his persona is the fact that he sniffs at regular intervals.

And yet, despite a first half that never quite finds its groove, the film springs to life post-intermission. There's a newfound clarity and a renewed sense of purpose in the story, which propels it forward. Sinha’s lens, which had remained outward and distant until then, zooms into the landscape. This is most evident in a masterfully staged gun-firing sequence, in which a pile of bodies lay atop each other, without a sound around them. It’s moments like these which have a much more searing impact than the film’s frequently didactic dialogues.

Sometimes, an ideology is inherited not by a gradual induction to it but by a sudden moment that changes everything. Nico — a young teen whose mother’s the only one who knows about Aman’s actual identity — is one such inheritor. His story gifts the narrative with immense emotional depth, sometimes with more than it is capable of handling. Another moment, in which a soot-covered Nico is traveling back home after his first kill, explains the cost of war and its impact on children with effortless ease that isn't quite visible in the filmmaking until this point. It’s heartbreaking to watch and supremely crafted.

The other emotional propellant of the narrative is the relationship between Aido and her father. She wants to represent a country her father doesn’t feel included in. Neither of them is wrong. The latter is played by an excellent Mepham Otsal, whose performance stems from a place of genuine empathy and understanding. However, this subplot doesn’t have the emotional prowess that’s present in the one between Nico and his mother, primarily because of Andrea Kevichusä’s consistently flat performance and an initial scene — where the discriminatory overtones feel tokenizing at best. A North Indian coach calls Aido "Chinese", "Chilli Chicken" and asks her if they drink alcohol with dog-meat at home, all in one scene. This is right after she’s been singled out at a nightclub, called a ‘parlour-wali’, and slapped repeatedly. Moments like these, which are loaded with unrelenting invective, appear in rapid succession and at an aggressively rushed pace, which is why they never provide the gut-punch Sinha was clearly aiming for. Before you can process the sheer volume of what you’re seeing and its intended impact, the film’s already onto its next scene — which is often entirely disconnected to the previous one.

It was only when the film entered its second hour did I realize that the first half was perhaps intentionally meant to create the slow-burning, often frustrating impact that it had. The accumulated tension — not as much a result of the tense storytelling as it was a byproduct of the exasperatingly paced narrative — is stunningly doused by a masterful interaction between Aman and his superior, played by J.D. Chakravarty. What is peace? Why is it so difficult to maintain? Do we often confuse control for peace? These aren’t questions we want to hear, they’re questions we need to hear. A moment as rousing as this is suffixed by an anticlimactic occurrence of which I won’t get into the details. Again, it’s not something we — the audience — are psychologically tuned to seeing in cinema. But it’s something we must see because this is cinema mirroring reality and in reality, human beings are capable of feeling more than one emotion at a time. Sinha’s grip over these transitional and transactional moments makes Anek a unique movie-watching experience; something I hadn't seen ever before.

Khurrana too, is brilliant in the aforementioned scene, delivering a performance bundled with angst and fury. Even though he’s saddled with a weakly written character, he does what he can, only in the way he can. Aman isn’t an outsider in the way Ayaan Ranjan from Article 15 was. He’s spent some time in the region, and has promised to stay away from any sort of emotional attachment. He tries to be clinical before diving deep into understanding the area’s real problems.

I don’t remember the last time I had such an intensely physical reaction to a film. I was clutching the edge of my seat, breathing audibly, even feeling a little giddy. There’s a strange trance-like quality the narrative eventually achieves — something along the lines of what Chaitanya Tamhane did in The Disciple. Over here too, rigorous filmmaking is used to tell a story full of rigor.

The film also intricately fleshes out the loyalty test minorities have to undergo and pass in order to be included. You have to prove your worth at every step of the way if

you don’t want to feel alienated. This is an issue that afflicts our country now more than ever, but Anek doesn’t trust its audience to understand this well enough solely by the subtext conveyed. Instead, a mid-credits scene spells this out for us — reminiscent of the preachiness that undid the film’s first hour. The subtler decisions — such as the character of Abrar Malik (an unsurprisingly terrific Manoj Pahwa) — have a far more deep-rooted impact than any of this. Malik is a Kashmiri Muslim who resonates with the plight of the people of the "Northeast". As he slowly lets go of his government-induced duplicity, he spares some empathy for the region and its people. Despite its briefness in the larger scheme of things, this writing decision never feels like a convenient way to reach a resolution. In fact, the film never reaches a complete resolution. A total resolution doesn't exist. Even the film’s tagline: "Jeetega Kaun? Hindustan!" is subverted in the most unexpected fashion, providing an antidote to the war-mongering jingoism that has now become the norm in Hindi cinema.

What’s baffling is the film’s lack of cultural specificity. Does the film not name the state it’s set in because of a controversy that may have arisen if it had done so? Are the makers trying to say that all the seven-sister states share the same set of problems? Not naming where exactly the film is set doesn’t give the story a universal identity, it just makes it appear shallow. Which brings me to the film’s root problem: depth. If the makers had chosen to dig just a little deeper, this film could’ve soared. But despite its inconsistencies, it’s a respectable, worthy attempt at highlighting an issue our mainstream media rarely covers. In dystopian times like these, where fascism continues to reinforce the oppression of the subaltern, I think I'll settle for that.