Paatal Lok
Chock full of vulgarity and mostly devoid of humanity, this series is a concentrated dose of most of the things that plague the elephantine and labyrinthine Indian “system”, which is a well-oiled machine, as opposed to the chaotic mess it appears to be, as one major character puts it in the denouement of the series.
It reminded me of Seth McFarlane’s Family Guy: it seems today, that all you see, is violence in movies and fornication on TV. Over the top platforms like Netflix and Amazon have made it trendy to create and promote shows that have gratuitous obscenities and mostly unnecessary graphic violence. I mean, where’s the subtlety that goes into treating the viewer as an intelligent human who can derive meaning from a scene? Instead, the creators go for titillation while staying just above the line that makes it fully pornographic or exploitation content. Adding controversy by using – yes, using – Muslims seems so easy these days, and yet draws accolades from many quarters. The mantra for these flagship series seems to be the good old “any publicity is good publicity”. I feel it’s a lamentable state of affairs as a viewer who feels uncomfortable watching such series with family, and yet that is the point: the makers want to portray the harsh realities of criminal India. Well, Ms Anoushka Sharma and team, mission accomplished (to say nothing of the stray dogs being ‘taken care of’).
Objectively, though, I must concede that production values are superb. I’m ‘Amaz’ed that Delhi police vehicles, settings and branding are liberally used. The ‘Prime’ character, while not exactly Elephant Man in terms of acting like the late John Hurt, can certainly take hits, both mental and physical, like the strong pachyderms. His path of redemption leads him through a maze and , ultimately, to the ‘door of heaven’ in the series finale. The story is good, with quirky characters and family matters galore. Fine actors – most of them probably happy at being given a chance to be profane on screen because that’s what grabs eye’balls’ these days, haha – come through superbly. Amazon spared no expense, and there’s a good amount of suspense.
Very little imagination or effort in naming the episodes, which irks me like much else about this series, except the main character. Let me give a rundown:
Bridges: ok, sure, nothing wrong about that, quite literally the setting of the main action sequence of the episode.
Lost and Found: again, cliched but true, a key suspect is lost and a key piece of evidence is found against all odds.
A History of Violence: ripped off. Blatantly. Look it up, if you will. It stars Aragorn.
Sleepless in Seatt-sorry, Seelampur. Wow. Just…wow.
Of Fathers and Sons: apart from being a Syrian documentary on terrorist training, it’s a little on the nose.
The Past is Prologue: is there a pun I’m missing or something?
Badlands: do we see a pattern here? Terrence Malick directed and Martin Sheen (more famous today as Charlie Sheen’s father, quite unfairly) starrer.
Black Widow: a tenuous link to a character’s behaviour pattern, and referenced by a politician in a rally, of all places. Plus, Marvel brownie points.
The Doors to Heaven (Swarg ka Dwaar): the most apt, perhaps, and fitting for the finale.
But enough deprecation from me. It’s no Godfather or Sopranos, but for a short, self-contained web series designed to drive up subscriber numbers, it’ll certainly (as far as I feel) net Amazon Prime quite a lot of the young, hip, escapist crowd looking for Gangs of Wasseypur thrills with gory kills and goosebump chills.
opendurbar 