The
only other film which matched up, and sometimes surpassed Shekhar Kapur’s
classic, which foreground the remarkable tale of Phoolan Devi in a searing
cauldron of caste and class, was Tigmanshu Dhulia’s 2010 Paan Singh Tomar. It
was as real as movies can be. In 2019, to ask us to watch a film on the dacoits
of Chambal, is to hold out the promise of something new, while paying full
attention to realism. Abhishek Chaubey’s very scenic Sonchiriya, tramping along
those nooks and crevices of the Chambal, expending hundreds of bullets and
quarts of spraying blood, made familiar by countless ‘daaku’ films of the 70s
and 80s, almost always feels like a retread.
Sonchiriya
takes its looks very seriously. Its band of dacoits are clad in torn and worn
khakee, the holsters in which they keep their guns look used, their socks and
shoes look as if they have been on those feet for miles and miles. But the film
never feels as real as it should: these are actors, some of them the most
brilliant we have, play-acting, and doing a great job but play-acting all the
same, at being ‘daakus’. Bajpayee always catches the eye, and there are a bunch
of authentic faces playing bit parts, but the one recognisable man who feels as
if he belongs to the terrain here is Ashutosh Rana, playing a Gujjar cop out
for vengeance.
The
mid-70s, during the Emergency (we know this because we hear Mrs Gandhi’s famous
proclamation on radio in the background), was a time when dacoits were being
enticed by the government to lay down arms and surrender, because the time for
‘dacaiti’ was over. We hear this conversation repeated in the movie: for a film
which is meant to be full of action, these ‘daakus’ speak a lot. More
dialoguing than speaking.
