Hindi Medium, Review by Siraj Syed: Admission only to the affluent and fluent

If you want to get your child admitted in any one of the top five schools in New Delhi, you have to be affluent, fluent (in English) and live a life-style typified by Western influences. This is the premise of Hindi Medium, releasing this week in Mumbai cinemas.

What happens if you have an intelligent daughter, are a couple that speaks Hindi, and have lots of money, not Westernised, and live in the crowded Chandni Chowk area, where Raj owns a fake designer label garments store? Can you still get your daughter admitted in a crème de la crème school? Hardly likely! So what do you do? Look for ways out that might not be ethical, if not downright immoral and illegal. That is the central idea of this film.

Incidentally, Hindi Medium here means that the medium of instruction at school is Hindi. It’s a convenient though barely relevant title for a film charting the adventures of a couple as they go all out to get their child admitted to a top English medium school. There’s hardly any reference to Hindi Medium. No reference also to the Bengali film Ramdhanu (Rainbow) from which Hindi Medium has obviously borrowed several sections.

Raj Batra (Irrfan Khan) and Meeta (Saba Qamar) are a prosperous couple, parents of a precocious girl. Meeta, who has better command over English than Raj, has this fixation that unless their daughter Pia gets into one of the Top 5 schools, she will be frustrated and depressed, and might even start taking drugs (a quaint peg to hand your humour on, not very effectively delivered). They apply in all five and are rejected in four, which leaves Delhi Grammar (Modern school was the location) as their last hope. Meet asks an old college friend to help, but he suggests that they go to a consultant and prepare for the entrance procedure, to ensure they meet the criteria and impress the school’s principal, Amrita Singh.

When all their the preparations prove futile, Meeta and Raj discover a short-cut that will get them within a lottery for under-privileged students, for whom the Delhi Government has reserved a 25% quota. If they move into a shanty and live the life of slum dwellers for about a month, all inquiries will confirm their poverty, and Pia will get admission. Of course, there would still remain the last hurdle—the lottery. But a tout arranges to fix that too. So, having moved from downmarket Chandni Chowk to upmarket Vasant Vihar (to match the standards of the parents at Delhi Grammar School) they now shift clandestinely, in the middle of the night, to a real slum. Just about then, a TV programme informs them that a racket involving illegal admissions to elite schools has been busted. It is then that their ‘heart of gold’ neighbour (Deepak Dobriyal) steps in and puts his life at stake to help his heart-broken slum-dwellers realise their dream.

Co-writer Zeenat Lakhani (co-writer on Saket Chaudhary's two earlier ventures too--Pyaar Ke Side Effects, Shaadi Ke Side Effects) was born and brought-up in Mumbai and worked as a journalist, before moving to TV. The strong TV angle must have come naturally to her. Hindi Medium is not a satire, because it is full of factual details. It is obviously not a documentary on the Right To Admission Act, though the act is very much at the core of the film. It is not a comedy...hold on! the only way it works is as a comedy. Yes, but until three-quarters of the film are over. It then starts lecturing and sermonising, getting into a battle with high-profile private schools and barely existing government-funded affairs. Towards the end, all the dozen-odd laughs you might have had are forgotten as the movie drifts into a quite called for ‘address to the nation’ by...who else? Irrfan.

Saket Chaudhary appears driven by good intent. Since getting your child into a good school is among the highest aspirations of some 30 million Indians, the subject is bound to strike a ready chord. Maybe it was the fear that such a hard reality issue would end up being a documentary, so the comedy and melodrama was introduced. Sadly, it ended-up not contributing to the satirical narrative; instead, it subverted the plot.

Irrfan is Irrfan, quintessential Irrfan: bulging eyes, motor-mouth dialogue delivery, the blank, roving look and under the breath utterances just before cuts. He even dances, albeit fleetingly. Not among his best. Either he is not getting better roles or he is opting for such films knowingly. To me, this outing was uncalled for, which is not to say he does not breathe life into it. Pakistani actress Saba Qamar (Zaman) resembles young Amrita Singh and utters her dialogue like Anushka Sharma. Her expressions and persona have limited shades, and, what is worse, she is made to repeat the “...start taking drugs” bit endlessly, till the novelty gets fossilised.

Deepak Dobriyal melts into his character. Here’s one under-rated actor waiting to get his due. Amrita Singh, with her rich base voice, is aptly cast as the principal. The supporting cast has done well: Vijay Kumar Dogra as the MLA’s PA, Taran Bajaj as the admission fixer (tout) and Jaspal Sharma as one of the Batras’s neighbours, Rohit Tannan and Devansh Sharma. At 132 minutes, Hindi Medium is 32 minutes too long, but it is too late for any pruning by the famed editor, A. Sreekar Prasad. Sachin-Jigar’s songs and Anil Mohile’s background music sound okay as long as you are inside the theatre, watching. After words, there is almost no recall.

Perhaps it is ironical, but the rating garnered by Hindi Medium is medium—medium here referring to middle ground.

Rating: ** ½

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjkFr48jk68