Director: Bejoy Nambiar
Writers: Bejoy Nambiar, Mithila Hegde, Francis Thomas, Neil Julian Balthazar
Cast: Harshvardhan Rane, Eshan Bhat, Nikita Dutta, TJ Bhanu
Duration: 153 mins
Available in: Theatres
Good luck googling “Dange” (“riots”) without it auto-correcting to danger, dangal or dengue – all and none of which apply to this wildly loud, feverish, disorienting, exhausting, garbled and kid-in-a-candy-store exercise in filmmaking. The challenge isn’t to survive this unhinged 153-minute kitchen-sink of a movie – it’s to review a Bejoy Nambiar movie without using the phrase “all style no substance”. (Or the shortcut: Refer to previous review). How much is too much? Dange (2024) really is death by filmmaking – every audiovisual, editing and musical tool in the world is flaunted for no reason whatsoever. Most directors tell stories, but it feels as though Nambiar untells stories. He scrambles them until the ideas evaporate. Forget being invisible, the craft is so proudly visible that nothing else is allowed to survive. The assault is so total that I can’t even tell what Dange is about. I’m not sure the film itself knows. But I’ll try.
Dange is set in and around a volatile college called St. Martin’s in Goa. Dudes live in shacks, do drugs, pick fights and roll into campus on beach buggies. Dudettes blow marijuana smoke into each other’s mouths. There are all of four recurring faculty members, who spend their scenes listening to protesting students. Ironically, hunky medico Xavier (Harshvardhan Rane) is so committed to the film’s tone that his final-year thesis is on hallucinogens and psychedelics. He has a sibling-like pal, Rishika (Nikita Dutta), who falls for his rival, Yuva (Eshan Bhat), a fresher with swag and a bone to pick. Xavier likes Gayatri (TJ Bhanu), a bahujan activist whose late boyfriend succumbed to depression. There’s also a strange shy-smiley girl who fancies Yuva, except she is the sort of exceptionally docile character that belongs to the Kabir Singh multiverse – all she does is flutter her eyelashes at Yuva, do classical dance and stay silent. The one time she speaks, a band performance drowns out her voice. At this point, I don’t even know if she was real, animated or a figment of my imagination.
With the annual college fest approaching – and with half a dozen sub-plots featuring student elections, acid attacks, stalkers, suicidal lesbians, dead brothers and local politicians – Xavier and Yuva remain on collision course. We know this because the camera keeps circling them whenever they face off, one of its many tricks to keep the viewer dizzy and nauseous. The climax is designed as one 20-minute long take – the anatomy of a riot – and I have opinions: Something on the lines of ‘walking Athena (2022), talking Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein (2001)’. But more on that later.
Hyper-masculinity is no offense at St. Martin’s; it’s a vibe, bro. When a toxic fresher attacks the girl he is obsessed with, Yuva defends him because it must escalate into a junior-against-senior clash. He continues to be staged as an underdog in the feud against Xavier, who sets out to punish the fresher. All’s fair in testosterone and war. Their duel hijacks the most apolitical student-politics drama ever, after months of Yuva (not the Mani Ratnam ode it thinks it is) and Xavier lurking as two alphas swimming in separate ponds. When in doubt, insert split-screen. When in further doubt, insert montage of college festivals and concerts and firecrackers – or Yuva loving the sound of his own voice and orating from the top of cars. When in no doubt, camera angles originate from a shower hose, the reflection on shades, and the eyes of a patient on a hospital bed.
That’s the perennial problem with Nambiar’s movies and shows. They’re so consumed by their own provocations that you can almost hear them scream: “Look, filmmaking! Look, two girls kissing! Look, inter-cutting between two unconnected scenes! Look, drone shots that put Indian Police Force to shame! Look, flashy disco-strobe titles and chapters! Look, background score drowning out dialogue! Look, zero rhythm! Look, random boxing match! Look, girl and boy sitting on a wet floor because it looks cooler! Look, a giant movie screen on a beach! Look, suicide attempt milked for flat comedy! Look, poor acting disguised as campy acting! Keep looking!” God forbid if a shot lasts for more than 1.5 seconds. Heaven forbid if a scene unfolds in a simple way. If a girl must confide about her tragic past, is it really a girl confiding about her tragic past if she isn’t sprawled, in a bra, on a neon-lit bed and holding a mini-projector that flashes images of her dead brother on the ceiling? I think not.
Now for that fabled single take – an ambitious sequence that seems to have been composed to trigger post-film breakdown videos. I’m a fan of long takes, and I’ve always believed that the gimmick is part of the thrill. Until now. This one opens inside an auditorium, takes to the roads, travels across town to a boys’ hostel, and ends in incoherent violence on a beach. It sounds impressive, but it’s not. It’s almost like the trembling camera and out-of-focus moments – basically, the mistakes – are passed off as…creative choices? You can tell that the limitations of the shot (as well as the clumsy transitions) are being sold as an aesthetic. If the blurry patterns are deliberate, then it makes even less sense. I found myself getting annoyed with the duration of the take, which I’m sure is not the preferred reaction. Whatever the case, it fails. The choreography is off, the movement is jarring, the timing is awry, and it has the depth of a kiddie pool. Which is to say: Look, dange(r) ahead!