Jana Gana Mana Movie Review : An engaging Social drama about social conscience and asking the right questions

Star Cast: Prithviraj Sukumaran, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Mamta Mohandas and Vincy.

If you can forgive the rushed climatic revelations setting up the ground work for the already announced sequel and often times mainstream nature of storytelling not adhering “to show no tell “ , Jana Gana might just be the best anecdote to the adrenaline pumping aftertaste of the recent wave of first class blockbuster filmmaking to the harsh realities of everyday life in our increasingly intolerant country.

Cinema can commit to the politically realities of our times through umpteen storytelling tools at its disposal, with the difference being the velocity of the punches being pulled in the name of creative freedom. Jana Gana Mana is a hard film to slot into as it adheres to its own grammar of resistance to narrate the story of a group of college students, who are on the lookout for justice from a system that conveniently labels them anti nationals and hushes away any call to arms for unity.The film is relentless in its pace, often times echoing the mind space of its primary characters, who are united by their passion for democratic dissent though who all end up being stereotypical placeholder social justice warriors who are not etched out to contain any real sense of rebellion, than the excitement of first discovery.

There are chunks of exposition delivered through quick cutaways and vignettes of memory pieces scattered throughout the screenplay in the earlier half, calling back to the central issue at stake, sometime over selling the emotional gut punch of the rebellious teacher instilling sparks of angst and dissent in her gullible students. The film sets up its central premise, with the careful formality of a crime procedural, tracking back the events leading up to a gruesome crime and its eventual elevation into an issue of national media uproar. Suraj plays divorcee cop torn between a visibly corrupt system constantly countering his attempts at unravelling the grim, ugly underbelly of its glossy, well designed exterior posturing. 

Jana Gana Mana is the kind of movie that goes out of its way to use the various news headlines and national tragedies, that have caught the public imagination by shock in recent times, as a part of story world design by default. Though the internal structuring of these elements and cases in question, are often times louder in tackiness but these rarely come across as being dishonest name taking, to drive home the narrative high points. Aravind Swaminathan (Prithviraj Sukumaran) is introduced only towards the midpoint of the screenplay and the actor elevates the common place rhythm setup up until that point, and the film quickly shapeshifts into being a one and half hour courtroom drama from being a ordinary crime thriller in the former half.

The switch in tonality however is smooth, thanks to solid faceoff between two sides of the system on court, clamoring at each other’s throats with cinematic one liners and generalized rhetoric’s, about the current plight of our democracy in self-hibernation mode. The promotional content of the movie, had me confused as to the cinematic tone that would be adopted to tell the story, here we get a pretty straightforward plot, structured in a non-liner fashion with some quality subversives in its approach to its revelations. 

We get all the staples of the sub-genre of social justice drama here like the loud backgrounds score designed to underline each passing punch line, nerve wracking monologues delivered in single takes, a slightly arrogant , superior defense lawyer taking digs at the heroic skepticism of his younger adversary on court proceedings, student sloganeering, placeholder villains who plot grand political strategies within the confines of posh executive rooms and virtually hand tied police force with a handful of eager yet not remarkable student group who spend majority of the screen time chanting slogans for justice and fair treatment.

The film is staged well and the Dijo Jose Anthony, the director finds visually stimulating ways to cover a courtroom space, without any narrative or mood jerks amidst the heaping down of new plot twists and expository information and abrupt character introductions. Sudeep Elamon’s camera glides through the events and is able to capture the supposed grandeur of the vision and he finds a visual consistency amidst all the chaos without relying on gimmicky, manipulative design of mainstream social dramas with an emphasis on the written word against any visual flourishes. 

Suraj gets the tougher end of the deal when in comes to character design as he is conceived as this almost stoic, non-reactive, subtle police officer who faces an array of set backs due to his staunch belief in an idealistic service when he is introduced. The performance is masterful as he maintains a poker-faced casualness to the part giving literally nothing away yet holding so much there for us to see, if we look closer. Prithviraj gets the less likable character though the innate unlikability of its initial sessions soon becomes a convincing jumping off point for him to stand and deliver pages and pages of punch lines summarizing the many evils plaguing the cultural , social and political attitude of our nation, often done with the commitment of a parallel running power point presentation, focusing on each social issue like caste discrimination in educational spaces, rising crimes against women and unflinching influence of media on our collective conscience. The actor after a series of sleeper performances looks and feels in command of his screen presence and the film warrant’s the casting of a A- lister casting choice, where explosive one lines and rhetoric delivered can land the desired punches, only if delivered by a star of his stature and unique image within the industry.  

The woman characters suffer the issue that most characters in this move faces, all of them represent a staunch belief in liberation and individual agency, yet at no points further dig deep to examine the humanity of these characters devoted to their causes. However this itself is a rare thing to find in star centric mainstream films. Sabha (Mamtha Mohandas) gets the staple idealistic rebel who initiates a student’s azaadi movement of sorts, and the actress seems to be enjoy playing the thankless token figure, whose fate becomes the inciting incident for the central premise of the movie to locate itself, storytelling wise. Vincy Aloshious, who plays a dissenter with aplomb and lends some credibility to the part. But nothing exceptional to write home about the design other than the thought behind inclusion of fierce, rebellious woman, who can stand up for themselves, even though all this works only a surface level.

Jana Gana Mana is the kind of film purposefully designed to evoke a gut reaction from its viewer and is a film that tries to start a deliberation of societal stigma revolving around religious, class, caste and ethnic identities.  The makers are deliberate in the loudness, as a form of resistance well disguised in the package of a fast paced, intriguing, commercial entertainer. Jakes Bejoy employs all his might in designing the soundscape of the film encompassing the initial emotional aggression and later passive hopefulness of the central narrative. The film asks too many troubling questions and never answers any of them, as any piece of art is never forced to address. If you can forgive the rushed climatic revelations setting up the ground work for the already announced sequel and often times mainstream nature of storytelling not adhering “to show not tell “ philiosophy of filmmaking, Jana Gana might just be the best anecdote to the adrenaline pumping aftertaste of the recent wave of first-class blockbuster filmmaking to the harsh realities of everyday life in our increasingly intolerant country.