A brave, flimsy take

BHEED IS A LOUD SOCIAL COMMENTARY THAT FALLS FLAT DUE TO THE WEIGHT OF TOO MANY HALF-COOKED STORIES AND CHARACTERS SEQUENCED INTO A LINEAR PLOT

- MIDHUN VIJAYAN

IN ALL of his recent films, Anubhav Sinha has tried to tackle India’s complex sociopolitical issues. His movies tend to be loud and direct, often crossing the line of being preachy. Bheed is no different. The movie is shot in the style of a documentary, with both wide frames and close-up shots, and attempts to bring out issues of caste, class, money, privilege and failure of a system, all in the background of a blocked check post—used as a microcosm of India—during the first lockdown to curb COVID-19. And while the director is fearless in his approach and has tackled the issues headon, a lot of depth and emotions are lost in an attempt to cover too many aspects.

Nearly the entire film portrays the events of a day, 13 days after the beginning of the first lockdown, when “migrants” are returning to their villages from cities that could never become their home even after they had spent decades living there. It depicts a monolithic system where desperate and clueless “migrants” are on one end, and a bunch of equally clueless bureaucrats on the other, with neither having an idea as to how the problem will ultimately be resolved. It steadily builds different characters and converges them to a tipping point, generating a certain curiosity about how it will all go down. This is one thing Bheed does well— establishing the confusion witnessed during the lockdown.