It’s heartening to see that Indian cinema is touching upon social issues, wherein commercial production houses like Dharma have come a long way from portraying the fun and frolic of college life to now dealing with the harsh reality of Indian society, like caste barriers and racial discrimination at the university level. Karan Johar has taken a huge step ahead to tackle the sensitive subject with a lot of maturity and sincerity. Directed by Shazia Iqbal Dhadak 2 is a remake of the Tamil film Pariyerum Perumal which bestows sharp writing, impressive dialogues, and incredibly strong performances.
The film stars Triptii Dimri and Siddhant Chaturvedi in the leading roles, also featuring Saurabh Sachdeva, Zakir Hussain, Priyank Tiwari, Vipin Sharma, and Deeksha Joshi in supporting roles who all elevated the narattive with their performances. Triptii (Vidhi) and Siddhant (Nilesh), as law students, display remarkable understanding of every nuance of their characters and backgrounds. Vidhi belongs to an educated family of lawyers who has seen all luxury in life, while Nilesh comes from a very poor Dalit family who has suffered atrocities due to his caste all his life in his village and now faces the same in his law college.
The film is woven into a tragic web of case-based discrimination in the education system involving the law professors and students coming from the higher strata of society. The film captures well the inflammable college protests and debates for and against reservations and fellowships given to students belonging to poor and downtrodden families, which I feel are quite justified for those who are devoid of any such privileges in the society, and with these reservations they get an opportunity to have higher education.
In the beginning the film portrays Nilesh, who is so horrified by much of his identity that he hides his surname and social status in his law class during his introduction and calls himself Nilesh BA LLB. As his classmates from higher castes find his identity, they start doing atrocities upon him by beating him, putting sewage water on him, calling him ‘nali ka keeda,’ and even mistreating his father(Vipin Sharma).
Siddhant Chaturvedi as Nilesh has given an exceptional performance portraying the vulnerability, rawness, and underlying strength of his character, who is the heart of the film, making this his career-best performance. He has put his heart out in delivering every emotion, investing himself in the journey of a poor young man who holds to the dreams of his mother. Looking at the pain of her family, she inspires Nilesh to educate himself, stating Dada Saheb Ambedkar’s journey, where his education became his sword to cut through all atrocities faced by the people of the lower castes, which is reflected in her strong dialogues.
Triptii Dimri plays well an educated and courageous girl who stands by her friend and lover Nilesh in the fight against racial discrimination. She has a strong screen presence while she conveys a wide range of emotions with subtle and powerful gestures like a defining loud scream which announces her final rebellion against her family’s injustice on Nilesh. Her chemistry with Siddhant is electric, and together, they create a love story that keeps you numb with it’s heartbreaking reality.
Shot without lavish grand locations, and rather capturing the slum life and a few university shots, the film creates the very essence with its minimalistic approach and shows the director’s prowess of storytelling with just its characters and key elements, like using light and colored backgrounds to enhance drama in certain scenes, which was meticulously crafted.
Shazia Iqbal has not just told the story but also woven in characters that stir your soul. The film is a heart-wrenching emotional drama layered with a couple of characters, like a revolutionary student (Priyank Tiwari) who fights against injustice and a psychopath (Saurabh Sachdeva)who kills young couples in love due to caste differences, while he calls it an act of cleaning the society.
The film eventually leads to opening Nilesh’s eyes as his college principal (Zakir Hussain) refers to his own example and backs him to take up courage to fight rather than to die in misery, as no one has the right to deny him his dignity, safety, and future. Nilesh finally chooses his right to survival and fights to establish and teach justice to unlawful lawyers and wins his case by establishing the right to equality as our fundamental right, as given to every Indian citizen by the constitution of India.
Overall a must-watch, educative family drama that instills the value of equality in the society with a vision to stand by the right to survival and education for one and all and rejecting any kind of discrimination if seen or found anywhere in the society.The film is truly a masterpiece that certainly deserves an Oscar nomination!
FF Rating: ââââ
