October, Review: Shoojit and the Shirker

Names have great significance in director Shoojit Sircar’s October. The month symbolises the blooming and autumn fall season of the night jasmine/coral jasmine flower, known in Bengali as Shiuli. Shiuli is also the name of his heroine, though she is Tamilian, Shiuli Iyer, but because Shiuli was so fond of the flower, they name her after it. Her mother is a lecturer and is called Vidya, meaning education. His protagonist is called Dan until three fourths of the film, and addressed by his full name, Danish, only towards the end.

Dan (Varun Dhawan) is living the life of any carefree 20 something, revolving around a bunch of friends and fellow hotel interns, who live in rented premises and feed off each other's everyday moments, their ups and downs. Basically, a shirker, with an attitude to boot, he has been reprimanded time and again by his boss, but to no avail. Shiuli (Banita Sandhu) also an intern at the same hotel, who, at times is at a receiving, end of Dan's audaciousness. For reasons not quite clear--maybe he does not like anybody working hard and thereby showing him in poor light--he has a grudge against her, and wipes his shoes every day on her laundry clothes, in contempt.

Life goes on until one fateful day, when the gang is partying, and Dan is missing. Shiuli makes a general inquiry, “Where’s Dan?” and then trips off the ledge to land on the concrete three storeys below. Doctors manage to save her life, but she suffers a paralytic stroke and goes into semi-coma. Suddenly, Dan develops a soft corner for her, beginning with his learning that the last words she had uttered were, “Where’s Dan?” Maybe she loves him, he might be telling himself. From then on, he devotes almost all his time to hospital visits and trying to make the recovering Shiuli talk. He bunks work on 53 of the next 90 days and endears himself to the hospital staff as well as Vidya and her younger daughter. The doctor treating her advises everybody to be patient, for “...the soul never dies”.

Juhi Chaturvedi (Piku, Madras Cafe,Vicky Donor) comes with excellent writing credentials. In October, she says she deliberately chose dialogue that was functional and character-based, and avoided any claptrap stuff. I go with her there. What comes through strongly in the film is that unconditional love exists, and that selfish, uncouth people may have a hidden side to them, that of caring, sensitive individuals. I find the premise Utopian, but the characters inhabit Chaturvedi’s world, not mine. Forty-six years ago, we had two such individuals in a film called Pakeezah. Raaj Kumar leaves a note at the feet of a sleeping Mena Kumari in a running train, saying her feet are very beautiful and that she should not lower them to the ground, lest they get dirty. An innocent prank perhaps, but it becomes the raison d'etre for the courtesan. That was set in decadent, Nawabi times, and had the execution been less brilliant, the film would have suffered from credibility.

Dan is not altogether convincing. As back story, we are shown his mother coming down to his hotel, tracing him and asking him why did he could not find time to visit home, and that’s it. Not enough. His manager’s benevolence is illogical too. Why would he recommend an oaf, a bungling, ill-tempered trainee, to become the manager of a hillside property? Vidya’s persona is better delineated, as are the interactions between the doctor and the patient’s visitors. Dan’s hanging his own four frame photographic print on Shiuli’s hospital bed, so that she cannot avoid looking at it is a deft touch.

Shoojit Sircar (Piku, Madras Cafe,Vicky Donor) takes pains to register Dan and his friends’ life-style and PG dig issues, all showing him is unflattering light. Likewise, at work, where he slides from one inappropriate behaviour to another. He also makes friends at  the hospital, where he manages to sneak in without a pass, or to sleep-in without permission. One scene with a nurse is particularly ‘touching’, pun intended. Such detailing apart, I find the subject matter rather thin. A colleague’s accident bringing out the best in a boor is not 115 minutes of narrative. Nursing of patients with multiple injuries and a stroke is not a predicament that anybody will look forward to. So, when it goes on for 90 minutes, it makes you uneasy. Yes, the protagonist is undergoing a transformation along the way, but there is no relief whatsoever in the morbidity of the situation, unless you consider one eye movement and uttering of one indistinct word as enough to hang on to. Sircar had this story for 14 years, which makes us expect even more than is delivered.

Varun Dhawan as Danish is natural. He even manages to do the unpleasant act convincingly. No fights, no heroics, just sentiments. Shoojit Sircar has said that this is his real debut, since he had to unlearn everything he had acquired as a comic action hero. Tall statement, but only partly true. Debutante Banita Sandhu (from Wales, United Kingdom, featured in a popular television advertisement directed by Shoojit) as Shiuli is in coma for most of the film, and is given the unflattering look of a badly battered bed-ridden accident victim. But buy, do her eyes act! Animation film-maker Gitanjali Rao as Vidya makes you wonder whether she should consider an alternative career. Dignified and compassionate at the same time, she has a strong presence. Ashish Ghosh is a quintessential, conscientious doctor. Iteeva Pandey plays the doting sister effectively. Sahil Vedoliyaa could easily be your tenant next door.

Music by Shantanu Moitra adds to the bitter-sweet progress of the story. Cinematography by Avik Mukhopadhayay and editing by Chandrashekhar Prajapati are of a high calibre.

October is a clean, well-intentioned, off-beat film, which offers one single refreshing thought: a good for nothing lad in his early twenties turning a new leaf after an incident and briefly discovering unconditional love. It takes too long to register this thought and fails to create additional plot points that could have taken it right up there. Goodness attained, greatness opportunity lost. With credentials like Juhi Chaturvedi and Shoojit Sircar, the bar had to be so many notches above.

Rating: ***

Trailer: https://youtu.be/7vracgLyJwI