Haryana, Review: But for Alia

She is not in the film. Reading the names of the cast, you will realise and confirm this fact. But then why this head-line? Because Alia Bhatt is the premise of almost one-third of the film, the last one third, that is, and her name is mentioned at least 100 times in the dialogue. Now that is not fair, you might grumble. The film is titled Haryana, isn’t it? Well, there is a lot of Haryana and a lot of Aliana in the movie. A well-intentioned film, with several noble causes to showcase, Haryana begins in Haryana, moves to Mumbai and heads back home, where some of the lead characters discover their roots. Unfortunately, however, it loses track along the way, time and again, and takes a circuitous route to get back, thereby downgrading its own lofty ideals.

Mahender is a rich farmer living in Hissar, Haryana, and has two younger brothers. One of them, Jaibeer, who has an artificial leg, is a student in an agricultural college, situated some distance away from their home, and part of the Hissar University. It is not quite clear what the other, named Jugnu, a 20 year-old, does, besides watching Hindi movies by the dozen. Mahender also dispenses his kind of justice and is quite unforgiving to anybody who tries to take advantage of him or cheat him. Under pressure to get married, in a society where women have little or no say and lead a cloistered life, interacting only with other women, he goes to seek a wife. The woman, Bimla, who is already 30 years old, is keen on studying and growing as an individual, a trait that both her parents and Mahender find strange. She has been warned not to say no, having negated many such proposals before, and after a brief, strange conversation with Mahender, she says yes. The two get engaged.

Unknown to him, Jaibeer has a crush on a girl named Vasudha, who is a student in his college. But being lame, he nurses an inferiority complex and is never able to talk to her. Instead, he is horrified to discover that she loves another student, someone who is not a Jaat and comes from a lower caste. Unable to see them together, he incites the college bully, Jeetu, to teach the boy a lesson. Jeetu and his henchmen beat up the boy, and, to add to his woes, inform the girl’s parents about the affair, who raise hell. Vasudha attempts suicide. Jaibeer, being a noble soul, has a change of heart, and asks Jeetu and company to lie low and let the two get together again. Jeetu cannot accept this change of stance, and he and his gang now beat-up Jaibeer. All this while, Jugnu is so badly infatuated with actress Alia Bhatt, after seeing her films, that he wants to marry her. (The film was obviously shot and completed before April 2022, when Alia got married, in real life). Lion-hearted Mahender sends Jugnu and his friends to Mumbai, with a fat expense account, to try his luck at achieving the impossible.

A Sandeep Baswana film all the way, it has story, screenplay, dialogue and lyrics by him, and he is also the co-producer. So, the responsibility for all the credit and the debit goes to him. An actor known for his role in Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, he struggles as a writer-director to get out of the episodic mode, a format dictated by TV, and even more so, by daily soap operas. In spite of some overlapping, you can cut the film into several independent episodes: Mahender and Bimla’s story, Jaibeer and Vasudha’s story, Jugnu and Alia’s story, the election episode, and so on. Coherence is missing. Baswana deserves credit for tackling issues like women’s equality, a problem that has plagued Haryana for decades, perhaps centuries, but he offers a simplistic solution that is hard to digest. Very often, he gets into detailing that is akin to missing the woods for the trees. Flash forward is another technique that he really milks.

Comparing and contrasting life and life-styles in small towns, or large villages, of Haryana, with a metropolis like Mumbai sounds good on paper, but it has been done dozens of times. Hitting out at those who communicate in English as a norm, arguably to project social status, and a country bumpkin getting caught in this milieu, right and propah, is nothing new either. Sometimes you begin to wonder whether he is trying to rejig Manoj Kumar, who capitalised on such premises in his films during the mid-sixties to the early eighties. Manoj went completely overboard in later outing, Clerk, while Sandeep Baswana manages to at least stay afloat. In between, there are several ho-hum moments that push you into grabbing 40 winks, methinks. Most dialogue are in the Q & A format, wit and repartee, one-upmanship, a style that might be peculiar to Haryanvis. There is also a good dose of claptrap stuff. On the lyrics front, Baswana scores better, with several numbers well written, particularly the ‘Maayaa, Saayaa’ one.

Some solid performances almost lift the film to a higher level, put there are too many pitfalls. Yash Tonk as Mahender has matured beyond belief. I have never seen him perform better. Paired opposite him is Baswana’s partner and muse, Ashlesha Chitnis, who plays Bimla. This is her big screen debut, though the she and Baswana had acted in Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. Robbiie Mairh plays Jaibeer, and underplays wonderfully. Monica Sharma as Vasudha has a smaller role. Her dusky beauty is enhanced by several slo-mo shots of her walking. Aakarshan Singh as Jugnu has a complex role, bordering on the ludicrous, but he carries it off well.

There are far too many characters to be assessed individually. Suffice to say that Raju Maan, Satish Kashyap, Hariom Kaushik, Manoj Rathi, Joginder Kundu, Kuldeep Sharma, Shankar Saharan, Rohit Bachi Billu, Vishwajeet Singh, Rohit Kundu, Manjit Beniwal, Naveen Dhankhar, Raashul Tandon, Vishwas Chauhan, Armaan Ahlawat, Mustafa Shervani and company have largely lived their roles. Aparna Mishra is in Special Appearance, and I just cannot recall what role she essayed. Quite a few actors have been chosen from the village Dobhi, which was the shooting location.

Camerawork by late Johnny Lal is fluid, with several pan-tilt shots, top angles, drone shots, and flashes, as in many TV serials. Editing by Sanyukta Kaza and Jitendra Dongare, with Sanyukta being the supervising editor, is marred by too many characters, and too many episodes, that take the film to all of 151 minutes. Music by Mohit Pathak and background music by Mohit Pathak and Guru Dhanoa contribute to the merits of the film, though the background score is sometimes over-the-top. Costume designer Renu Kadiyan has had a field day, with both urban and designer clothes to pick for the huge cast.

In the end, the film becomes a hotchpotch of strong-arm flexing, off-screen gory violence, women’s rights and equality, village values versus city slickers, a head of a family who spoils his family silly, deadly caste system, the life of a young, rich man who has an artificial limb, local elections, petty thieves, college goons and what have you. It is regrettable that such talent went into the making of Haryana, which, after all, amounts to very little. For a few cine-goers and fans, the biggest disappointment will be the fact there is no Alia Bhatt in it. Her presence might have added some charm to the film, but for Alia, even in a special appearance, it would have little significance.

Rating: **

Trailer: https://youtu.be/enlStDL9qqw