Movie Review – Hindi Medium by Suhel Johar

Hindi Medium Is An Impressive Satirical Take On Our Flawed Education System.

Every year good English medium schools or private schools in India witness large queues of anxious parents outside their admissions office, waiting to get application forms and secure seats for their tiny tots. For many parents, after all, passing out from a good school is a ticket to future success. For most parents, a choice of school for their children is driven by perception, peer pressure influence, word of mouth (reference from acquaintances and relatives or other parents).

Hindi Medium talks about language imperialism and how it influences an individual’s self confidence, ambitions and life. It is a funny take on India's school admission woes which deserves a watch.

The film revolves around an Old Delhi couple,  Raj Batra (Irrfan Khan) is a garment businessman based in Chandni Chowk, who deals with original imitations of Manish Malhotra and Sabyasachi Mujherjee’s creations. Raj is a Hindi-Medium guy while his over-bearing and demanding wife Mita (Saba Qamar) has done her schooling from a local English-Medium school. However, she wants her daughter to study in one of Delhi’s five topmost schools. To ensure that, she even nags her husband into agreeing to move to a posh neighbourhood in an attempt to change their style of living. However despite all their efforts, their daughter doesn’t get admission in four schools. In a desperate attempt to keep his wife happy, Raj tries to get his kid admitted to the remaining one school through gareeb quota by nefarious means. But in a twist of fate, they had to really move into a poor neighbourhood for a month to validate their admission status or land themselves in jail for fraud.

As they start living among the poor, they meet labourer Shyam Prakash (Deepak Dobriyal) and his family. Shyam Prakash is a man witty who leaves everyone in splits with punchlines like,”hum shuddh gareeb hain.”

Living in the poor neighbourhood Raj and Mita realise they have got their priorities about life all wrong.

The film was initially scheduled to release on  May 12, 2017 but was postponed to be released on May 19, 2017. The story is good and despite of being a true story, it has some funny elements which make you laugh. The humor worked out well and the best thing is the school and dialogues which makes you laugh, cry and feel emotional.

While the first half has many LOL moments, the second half has some emotional ones that will touch. For a satire to work, the humour and the writing should be very effective. Thankfully in the case of Hindi Medium, the film has succeeded to a large extent in justifying these two aspects. But wonder if it would have been more effective if the director had avoided relying on the usage of caricatures and cliches to make his point.

 

The dialogue, especially those delivered by Irrfan, are witty and manage to elicit a chuckle every now and then. When Bollywood has often hesitated in taking on social issues fearing controversies, Hindi Medium takes on one of the most pertinent issues affecting our society – the circus behind school admissions. The writers have tried to address the issues without getting too preachy (except for the climax), and they have done it in a light-hearted manner.

The story of the film is quite simple but with the elements of comedy elements and a smile on the face with dialogues, this work has been shown very well.  Hindi Medium is a very engaging piece of cinema, some of the events shown in the film may look exaggerated, but like Naagin, the soap Raj watches, we Indians love exaggeration. There are scenes where the film highlights the corruption in this system. It feels shocking to see how rich take advantage of the quota reserved for poor for their own needs. However, it’s not just the administrators of educational systems that the film is poking fun at, it’s our own mentality. Hindi Medium also deals with the issue of interviews before admissions and it tries to ask a few very pertinent questions.

But while Hindi Medium highlights these questions that ail Indian education system, it fails to provide any solution to these issues. By the end of the film, you are left wondering about what was the aim here? Was it about changing the admission process or the way education is imparted; or the way that parents get carried away by their ambition to see their kids become masters of everything. In the climax scene where Irrfan Khan takes the stage at the school function, you wait with bated breath for that one masterstroke that can make the film cross that thin line between good and great. Sadly, it doesn’t take the crucial step. So Hindi Medium may not be the best in the genre of satire, that honour still lies with the classic Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. This is a film with which every Indian student and parent will be able to relate.

The film's direction is very good. Director Saket Chaudhary seems to have done a fair bit of research as the film aptly portrays the chaos ensuing during the school admission process. Incidentally, there were reports that Hindi Medium was allegedly inspired by Shiboprosad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy’s 2014 Bengali film Ramdhanu, a charge Chaudhary has repeatedly denied.

Zeenat Lakhanias the writer of the film scores in delivering this social satire that keeps you entertained throughout. Laxman Utekar’s cinematography is effective while Sreekar Prasad’s editing is fine-tuned and crisp.

Sachin-Jigar’s music is good. The songs complement the story line and at no time seem forced. Off late, almost all Hindi films can boast of a reprised version of an old hit number. Hindi Medium does that too but with a twist. Instead of remixing an old Bollywood track, the makers picked two Punjabi chartbusters by Guru Randhawa and Sukhbir. Thankfully, they got the original artists to churn out newer versions of the songs, Suit Suit and Tarey Gin Gin, respectively.. Hoor sung by Atif Aslam and Ik Jindari sung by Taniskaa Sanghvi are two impressive original tracks from the film. The songs complement the story line and at no time seem forced.

Performanceswise,  Irrfan Khan has once again proved that why he is regarded as a complete actor.  Irrfan’s portrayal of a father and husband is very accurate.  Saba Qamar did not let it appear at all that this is her first Hindi film.  Together they are very funny and keep you entertained throughout the film.

Deepak Dobriyal shines in his role and once again proves that he is a scene stealer. Dishita Sehgal who plays Irrfan and Saba’s daughter is good. Amrita Singh looks convincing in her role of a corrupt principal.Neha Dhupia and Sanjay Suri don’t get much scope in their cameos to display their acting skills as they get to portray caricatures rather than characters. The work of Tilottama Shome and the rest of the artists is effective.

On the whole, Hindi Medium is an impressive film that can be seen by the entire family.