On Bhediya
Bhediya was one of the movies that sparked my interest after watching the trailer and knowing that Amar was the director. Although it was dubbed in Telugu and had a theatrical release in Telugu, I couldn’t watch it then.
My friend Vishnu watched the movie back then and mentioned the movie has good VFX. I was waiting for it to come on OTT and watched it last week.
I’ll just present my thoughts here without getting into the movie’s story.
I admired that Amar set this story in Arunachal Pradesh, the lesser explored, more stereotyped, and underdeveloped place in India.
Since he brought the characters to Arunachal Pradesh, I expected and applauded that they brought up the stereotyping and passing of racist slurs against North East people. It has become an element of humour to pass racist comments on them and laugh in groups. They highlighted this between the friends, realising how hurtful those comments are to the ones at receiving end.
At the surface level, this is a humorous story of man vs nature and how nature tries to protect itself from the devastation due to human greed.
In the movie, the protagonist’s need is not highlighted. He’s constantly mentioning how important that roadways project is to him and his family, but it doesn’t strike a chord. If you consider Kriti Sanon as the protagonist, then you have the character’s journey.
Also, the film, at times, looks over-polished. With dialogues or the production design, it doesn’t seem rustic or natural. This might be a production call to beautify the movie. Even the night shots look aesthetic.
After the intense and intriguing introduction scene, I wondered when there’d be a payoff for that scene. Also, Kriti Sanon can’t be a mere asset for songs, and comedy is what I felt, and the twist took me by surprise. It was good to see that unfold, only to be disappointed in the climax.
Speaking of emotions, it is tricky if one decides to keep a movie light-hearted, but the plot has intense emotions. When there are scenes that you want to feel, these comedy parts come in between and don’t let you get to the depth of what was intended.
The comedy works in parts. There is a moment in the interval scene where I paused the movie and laughed out loud that has something to do with making the wolf respond to the sound coming from a car.
In the climax, though I wanted to feel for Kriti, the lightheartedness of the entire movie prevented me from feeling bad. It was good to bring back the age-old ‘hero saving heroine from villains’ template by changing the lead characters to wolves and humans ultimately bowing to nature to spare them.
All the actors did their parts well. I liked a couple of scenes that involved VFX. The transformation scene from a man to a wolf is brilliant. The scenes involving wolves (or wolves) are amazingly picturised. Except for the first song, I didn’t notice the music. It may be due to the fact that they want the story and emotions to elevate the scenes and engage the audience over loud music.
On the script level, this movie feels as ambitious as Kantara, but adding situational comedy and wanting to become too many things deviates it from becoming an intense story of Man Vs Nature.
Amar Kaushik’s films subtly deal with the underlying problems among humans in a humorous way. His movies are like listening to moral stories in childhood. Overall, I liked this film, although there are parts that I didn’t like.
Until next time…
