Jottoshob 09: WTH happened with Dahaad?

Did directors change midway? Did the editor not get the brief? Will the real Anand Swarnakar please stand up?

Dahaad has (had) such a strong grip on a riveting story. They have a huge team of writers, and a collection of celebrated directors, and yet the series slipped right out of their hands. To emphasize for just a second longer:

The plot is beyond commendable. I’m not usually a thriller fan, but the treatment of (so many varying) narratives won me over. Caste discrimination, the image of coming-of-age girls in the larger society, the nuances of parenthood, nerve-chilling psychopathy, and, what I loved most — the portrayal of how terror outfits recruit youngsters.

In the beginning of the series, when a brother persistently pleads with the police for help with his missing sister, he is shoo-ed away like some pest. Classic display of systemic indifference. But here's where it gets interesting: it is what pushes citizens to extremist behaviours. Systemic apathy. When the brother sees a genocide-aligned party that could “save” her Hindu sister from a Muslim boy (even though he knew their relationship was consensual), he submits to their attractive sloganeering. If the system, the law of the land, has thrown them out to rot, any ray of hope is worth clinging to. Especially if it is for the well-being of somebody you love earnestly.

I think it's brave of Dahaad to be talking so openly about Pragya Singh Takur and Yogi types. (unserious)

Sonakshi rises to her potential, and her hard work shows. I was near 100% sure that I’d see Sonakshi in the series instead of Anjali Bhaati, but surprisingly, that didn’t happen. She embodied Anjali quite honestly, right up till the end. Gulshan was fantastic; I was sold on his one-liner in the trailer itself: “Ye profile toh mere pe bhi fit baithti hai,” in response to Bhaati describing the murder suspect. Baba suggested (on Duranga’s basis) that Vijay and Gulshan’s roles could have been interchanged because he believes the latter would’ve done a better job in developing that grey character.

I, on the other hand, think it’s largely the writer or production team’s negligence. There isn’t more than a 4-second clip of the actual psychopathic character. And here come the spoilers: The real Anand Swarnakar never really comes out. We don’t have a minute to ourselves with the mastermind, to watch him, his quirks, learn how his mind works, etc. What is the point of creating an elaborately layered and unendingly interesting character, if you aren’t going to let the audience ever really see it?

I mean:

FOUR SECONDS AUR EK HASI SE KYA PATA LAGTA HAI YAAR?

Near the end, they had the chance of a precious Riddler-like interrogation moment (Reeves’ The Batman), but they let that slip too, crushing all last chances of us getting to study the killer’s mind — his ‘why’s, because that is ultimately how you take preventative measures against others on their way to becoming versions of Anand. Isn’t that the purpose of it all? (Achha purpose so goli maro par film samajh mein toh aaye at least?)

It bothers me: how can the most interesting character also be the least developed?

That isn’t where the grief ends, either. Studying the germination of Anand Swarnakar’s psychosis is also a hard task left to the audience. In fact, Bhaati’s college professor could have been a relieving bridge with his profiling capabilities, and knowledge of criminal psychology, helping decode the killer’s motives for the audience, which, unfortunately, has been left to up to me tonight because they — you guessed it — didn't utilize his role enough. Baba actually made that point. Go, Baba!

So, here’s what I see:

Several references to the death of his mother, and the ultimate revelation of how it all happened, is the only thread that may bring a semblance of understanding to this entire murder-confetti-marathon situation he has got going on. Ted Bundy had resented his mother, so he would murder those who resembled her, with her blonde hair. Anand Swarnakar’s mother was murdered and he was a child hushed into complicity. Is that where he got a taste for crime? That doesn’t really explain it because father and son don’t get along at all, and I'm guessing he liked his mother better (to have held that grudge against his father for so long). Why are two opposite feelings towards mothers, leading to the same outcome, i.e., killing women?

So, the “why” continues. He just hates villager girls? He's a castiest? He marries only the girls who make him wait? But he was chatting with Miriam while being married, which means she was on the kill list, so, “wait” can't be the factor. What is he? Tell us, too-many-directors-to-name. Tell us.

If his vague logic of “good girls not spreading their legs for strangers” is to be scrutinised, his wife was also sleeping with somebody else. He didn’t kill her. Never even tried to, or thought to. So, then? Where’s the consistency in his philosophy? Where is this array (ARRAY) of writers and directors trying to take us? Did nobody sit and watch the whole thing even once to at least sort out the overbearing loopholes?

The sites of trauma, too, were represented poorly, with an unnecessarily long opening shot which could have stopped at the sound of women banging their fists on the door, echoing into the opening theme (love you, komorebi). But no, the clichéd shots of #womenjusthavingadownrighthorribletime followed. We have heads. We have consumed enough of exactly these stock footage type scenes to never have to see one every again. Imagine kar lenge next time se, full HD pe, aap aage badho.

Further, the scene with Lata, where her clothes are being teased off of her. The directors could have had Varma playing with the camera instead, showing the cinemagoer’s male gaze what their letching looks like — creepy, scary, and utterly inhuman.

Instead, fetishes were pacified, allowing those who couldn’t learn the film’s lesson, to at least take away masturbation material from it.

You could learn from the goddess Laura Mulvey by looking up Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The internet is full of notes on it but if you'd like me to help you understand the male gaze theory, shoot me a DM. It is crucial to understand what bad trauma representation can do to a society (and what good representation MAY change).

ANYWAY, as I was saying:

Dahaad “fumbling the bag” is worth talking about because it actually did what our professor often likes to say (when we have a tonne of research but no solid hypothesis) — “caught the tiger by its tail” — but couldn’t hold it down. The last episodes wind on incessantly, almost daring you to fastforward through. Once the pill mystery has been sorted, the plot overshoots and spills into a mess of predictability, machismo, complete lack of nuance, and, especially for Vijay Varma, it brings monotone to what was a dynamic character.

The series is a 6-episode package at most. The minute-long footage of Bhaati climbing a pipe was cinematically gorgeous but placed wrong. Everybody knows you don’t radically drop the pace towards the end of an edge-of-the-seat thriller. Everybody knows that. Everybody.

Parghi’s solitary drive, however, was masterful. The frames, the music, the character development without using a single word — I tip my hat to thee, for it. I marvelled at the sequence time and time again. The nuances developed in Parghi — the least important character of four — still had more work dedicated to his sketch than the actual psychopath’s. His stand on parenthood won my heart over, which made me hope he “had his moment,” and the surprising summons it brought. Oho.

Ah, I'm veering off track.

It did not help that I watched The Song of Scorpions a few hours after finishing the series, because in Irrfan, you find psychosis so beautifully portrayed, so effortlessly, so… naturally — it was as though the universe had sent me an example of who Anand Swarnakar could have been, or rather, how the directors could have done justice to what could have been the character of a lifetime.

To assuage my own guilt for critiquing such an almost-fantastic series, I just want to add: I’m not critiquing Kisi Ki Bhai or any Kartik Aryan film — I don’t spend so much time dissecting garbage, I would like to believe. Dahaad really convinced me that it would deliver holistically — which, it, well, did not.

Honestly, you’re telling me a psychopath’s last chance of words would be how a class 8 student would tease her heart-eyes friend? Those are his closing dialogues? All this mastermind planning, all of this brilliance, led to this?

In the end, Bhaati changes her name back to Meghwal (her original surname, which her father had changed so she wouldn't have to deal with casteist slurs). It is a power move, but ending on that alone entirely shifted the focus of the series, and confused an already confused viewer about whose story this really was. It is as though every character somewhat completes their arc, except Anand. With neither the beginning, nor the end of a psychopath’s journey, all we have are tabloids with images of violated women, a tough psychoanalytic journey left entirely to the audience (how dare you?), and an unsurprising positioning of the village as a den of misogyny (a microcosmic view of what the larger national mentality is really like).

The eeriely beautiful cinematography of the opening credits is entirely absent in the rest of the series. Seriously, what happened there? Dahaad is so fragmented in its vision and handling, that reconciling all of its parts feels like a greater challenge than apprehending a serial killer.

I joke

?