Kahaani

 

The title could not have been more apt. The story is indeed the centerpiece of Kahaani, a taut, no-frills thriller that is crisper, sharper and infinitely more intelligent than what the Mumbai dream factory usually hoists upon us.

 

From the intriguing, claustrophobic opening sequence of a masked man dropping a vial of deadly liquefied gas into a cage of white mice to the evocative signing-off shot of the earthen face of a Goddess Durga idol sinking into a river and disappearing from camera’s sight, Kahaani is a compelling narrative all the way through, with a shocking finale to boot.

 

The film blends the finest elements of an arresting human drama with the high jinks of a measured whodunit and then presses its technical attributes into service to enhance the impact of the tale. Rare indeed is a Hindi film where superficial technique does not overshadow the screenplay and pumped-up superstars do not ride roughshod over sense.

 

Producer, director and co-writer Sujoy Ghosh gives lead actress Vidya Balan all the ammunition that she needs to go firing on all cylinders. She makes the most of the opportunity, just as she did in Ishqiya, Nobody Killed Jessica and The Dirty Picture.

 

Balan, a bundle of coiled energy, conveys both tenacity and vulnerability with minimal apparent effort and milks the ebbs and tides of the characterization for maximum impact. Take a bow, Vidya, what a kahaani it is turning out to be!

 

The story does matter here, so one wouldn’t want to give too much away. So here we go with due caution. A poison gas attack on a Kolkata Metro train compartment triggers panic in the city. Into this urban maelstrom steps a heavily pregnant woman, Vidya Venkatesan Bagchi (Vidya Balan), who has flown in from London in search of her missing husband, Arnab Bagchi, the father of her unborn child and partner in the firewall programming firm that the couple runs.

 

From the airport, she heads to the Kalighat police station to begin her search. A young policeman, Satyoki Sinha alias Rana (Parambrata Chatterjee), is deployed to help her get around a city she has never visited before.

 

But there is somebody out there who does not want Vidya to find her husband and all her efforts to solve the mystery of the man’s disappearance while on a two-week assignment at the National Data Centre hit a dead-end.

 

Bob Biswas (Saswata Chatterjee), the undercover contract killer who has been hired by the faceless but powerful puppeteer to bump off anybody who wants to ferret out information about Arnab that might lead to the man behind the Metro attack, issues a dire warning to Vidya: “Go away, madam, Kolkata is a dangerous city.”

 

The city, which is almost like a full-fledged character in the narrative, impinges on the protagonist’s soul in varied ways, both positive and negative, as she stumbles from one startling discovery to another without getting anywhere near the truth.

 

Ghosh weaves the chaos and buoyancy of a decadent but spirited Kolkata into the fabric of the story and it isn’t just the usual snapshots of Victoria Memorial and Howrah Bridge that he falls back on to establish the connection.

 

In Kahaani, Kolkata isn’t just another big urban cauldron bursting at the seams. It serves as a metaphor for a huge and baffling poisoned, quicksand-infested pool where one wrong step could be the last.

 

If there is no let-up in the air of fear and foreboding that runs through the narrative, much of the credit should go to Namrata Rao’s adroit editing, which lends both pace and vigour to the storytelling.

 

Kahaani also benefits from an array of consistently competent performances, not the least of which is the one by Nawazuddin Siddiqui as an Intelligence Bureau officer.

 

Parambrata, Saswata, Abir Chatterjee (in a guest cameo), Darshan Zariwala (as a retired IB hotshot) and Kharaj Mukherjee (as the officer-in-charge of the Kalighat police station) are all pitch-perfect.

 

Kahaani clearly isn’t your average Bollywood film, but Bollywood would be a far better place if could churn out more kahaanis of this quality.