All hail Bhandarkar!. Review on Corporate

What do you want to see in a movie? Whether or not you should see Corporate depends on your answer to the question. If you generally want to have a good time and be entertained - thoda dishum-dishum, nach-wach, comedy track aur haan ek item number bhi ho jaaye, bas kya! - you will not really enjoy this movie. But if you expect cinema to fulfil its highest purpose - to present a slice of life, maginified several times on the giant screen - and can tolerate the intrusion of above-mentioned commercial compulsions in the story-telling, then this is themovie for you. Yep, Corporate is for the supposedly snobbish elite referred to as discerning viewers.

Thought the media did a bad job of reviewing the movie, they didn't do a bad job of summarising the plot. Still, here it is in brief - Sehgal group of industries(SGI) and Marwa group of industries dominate the soft drink market. Sehgal Group is led by a younger, dynamic chairman (Rajat Kapoor) running a professional set-up, whereas Marwa group is run by an older, traditional business baron (Raj Babbar) who pulls out every trick in the bag to oust him in bagging the public sector bottling plant run by the Maharashtra govt. Meanwhile, Sehgal's brother-in-law (Kay Kay Menon) returns from failed business ventures in London and teams up with sweetheart Nishigandha (Bipasha Basu), a senior SGI executive to re-establish SGI' s lead over Marwa in the market. Nishi uses unscrupulous tactics to steal Marwa group's proposal for a mint soft drink. SGI seizes the opportunity to lauch their own mint soft drink brand ahead of Marwa group and capture marketshare. But that is not the end of it. In an award ceremony, Sehgal is snubbed and pipped to the post by Marwa, despite being tipped off as being the sureshot winner of Businessman of the year award. His ego hurting, he advances the launch of the new drink further. With the 10 days to go for the product launch, pesticides are discovered in the water source of the soft drink plant where the new drink is being manufactured. The FDA denies licence to sell the product. Faced with an ethics v/s profits dilemma, Sehgal brusquely pushes ahead with the project, producing one of the many powerful lines of the movie, "Waise bhi hamare log gutter ka pani bhi peethe hain!" The CEO of the SGI immediately resigns from the company, preserving his integrity. Nishi and Ritesh stay on. What happens next? Does SGI pay the price for their owner's greed? How does Marwa group seek to capitalise on their rival's setbacks? Does Sehgal take responsibility for the situation or will he look for a scapegoat? Will Ritesh and Nishi escape from the corporate war unscathed? Where does society stand in the priority of businessmen, politicians and NGOs' interests? These are the questions Bhandarkar answers one by one and the answers are not comforting at all.

Now onto the technical aspects of the movie. Camerawork and editing continue to be unimpressive like in Page 3. Soundtrack is very average and background score is discordant. As for the acting, it's an all round impressive performance by the cast. Bipasha Basu, Raj Babbar and Rajat Kapoor are excellent. Kay Kay Menon looks terribly uncomfortable to start with, but as the movie progresses, his performance improves with an intense finale. The other actors enact their limited roles well.

But the real star of the movie is Bhandarkar again. In Page 3, Atul Kulkarni, Konkona Sen Sharma and Boman Irani stole some of the thunder and the movie was more oriented towards satire. This time, Bhandarkar presents a larger canvas and overshadows the individual performances of the actors with his vision. There are glitches in the plot and in a few places the movie lacks continuity to an extent. But his greatest achievement is presenting life through a none-too-flattering prism. He confronts us with hard questions about the modern set-up and its compulsions. We are at a loss for answers and unable to find anything to seek shelter in in the darkness of the cinema hall, all we can do is shift uncomfortably in the seat as he brings to our eyes all we knew about the corporate world but wished wasn't true. As in Page 3, but in a less light-hearted vein, Bhandarkar asks the philosophical question that is yet to be answered by the wisest of men,"What exactly is the point of life as we know it and is so much strife and skirmish really necessary for us to live with each other?" Yet again, he shows how the common man is a helpless bystander and powerless puppet in the hands of the rich and powerful, who play high-stake ego games, not caring for the lives they topple in the process.

At the end of the movie, there are two options for you - either you whole-heartedly applaud Bhandarkar for his courage in forging ahead with his very real vision of life or feel overwhelmed by the cynicism of the corporate world and shrug it off by dismissing him as a gloomy filmmaker who attempts to sensationalise reality by presenting it in an overly dark light. If you chose the latter, you missed out on Bhandarkar' subtle optimistic touches - the extremely driven Nishi and Ritesh are selfless and uncompromising in their love for each other, in the concluding scene, a policewoman holds Nishi's illegitimate child for her as she enters the court for a hearing. Even in the midst of war, there is love. Even in despair, there is the spark of a bright future. What a beautiful film! Hats off to you, Bhandarkar! Lage Raho! You have one fan for years to come.