'Badla' is just as its title suggests. A tale of revenge which leads us to believe things and switch those very beliefs within seconds. This film is an elaborately constructed psychological game of cat and mouse, which covers what the general public believes about the legal profession. It has us empathize with certain characters and hate them just minutes later for their despicable actions. This movie comes across as a locked room mystery, a revenge story, a twisty thriller, but it is a tale which implores us to pay attention to the details again and again. More often than not a tiny element in some frame was missed by me and I felt just as a particular character did when they too realised that they hadn't paid close attention to all the details.
We get right to it from the start. The opening credits created a tense atmosphere which captured my attention. Everything was in black and white and seemed intricately connected. The background song vocalized by the lead actor too was what I managed to identify and began thinking of the last time an actor sang his own song in a film. There have been many instances of course, but this minor thing got me interested.
This film takes place in the apartment of Naina Sethi (Tapsee Pannu) where she is interrogated by her defence counsel and undefeated lawyer Badal Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan) who says he has been persuaded to come out of retirement. Naina who is out on bail (she has to wear an ankle tracker) narrates her version of events which have led up to this moment to her legal counsel. The scenes from outside the apartment take place in the form of narration through flashbacks.
The first thing I remembered about this combo was their earlier film "Pink" where they portrayed the lawyer and client characters. However, this lawyer-client relationship here is completely different.
Badal believes that justice is blind and constantly thwarts Naina’s version of events going as far to call it very convenient that a character develops a new skill just at the right moment. Isn’t that a thought we have all had whilst watching a movie.
He repeatedly tells Naina (and indirectly addresses us behind the 4th wall) that it is important to focus on each and every single minute detail. At times I wish I had paid better attention to the minutest element in the frame and not just been delighted at having found that one detail but completely miss the details within that detail.
Badal takes the words of Dr. Gregory House to heart and believes that, "Everybody lies." And it is only through the successful identification of ones lies that the truth can be spotted. The thing to remember while watching this film is to focus on the details and believe everything or maybe not? But always remember the liar seeks to recreate a setting from inspiration and if something seems out of place... well it usually is. Spoiler? No, you will see too many red herrings if you are determined to spot this based on my previous sentence.
Having caught this film on Netflix after being confounded on numerous occasions I decided to rewind to the critical moments and saw that what was being shown more clearly was actually there in screen in a blink and you miss it style of appearance. To really enjoy and experience this film you need to have your brain switched on throughout. ‘Badla’ does spell things out for you later on, but what's the fun in that.. wouldn't you rather have that satisfied smirk on your face when you see your prediction unfold on screen. And make no mistake if your grey cells are active you will be able to predict what happens for this film seems to fall victim to the frequency of its plot twists.
With the basic structure of mystery films in general and our limited number of characters it is all but obvious that one of them is heavily involved in the killing. You know that there will be that one final twist, because the film has had no shortage of them and the twists won’t stop coming right at the climax where the audience usually expects the major reveal to pop up. You will be waiting for it and perhaps like me you too would find it predictable and be of the opinion that 'Badla' fell victim to its own ingenious script character development
The acting is good with special praise going to Tapsee Pannu after initially coming across as the scared woman she has been in both Pink and Game Over presented another side of herself which managed to make me direct a variety of emotions other than sympathy to her character. In her scenes with Amitabh Bachchan she both acts with authority and reacts with tension and is able to hold her own.
Looking back and thinking closely about this film, particularly the dialogues I felt delighted that I was able to predict that ending. It was that obvious in retrospect... who else would speak about what they spoke in that manner. Perhaps it was due to the fact that there were so many twists and turns throughout the 117 minute run time that there could be an argument that this was predictable and shouldn't have been missed by the eagle eyed viewers. But are we conditioned to tune in to a Bollywood film with our brains switched on?
This is a good thing that is happening in Bollywood right now and hopefully more films like 'Badla' can change the way Bollywood is looked at from films of song and dance melodrama to serious and gripping cerebral cinema.
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