Meet Il Cult Indian Cinema

All things set aside, admitting the significance of the National School of Drama in setting the bedrock of cult Indian Cinema, churning out artists as brilliant as Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Seema Biswas etc. (the list being indefinitely long) is hardly debatable. The likes of many such actors have been reduced, however, at some point in their lives to do cinema being definitely not in accordance to their forte (except for their contribution to worthy cinema, especially the cult Parallel movement of the 1980s). The peer pressure of earning bread has been the sole reason, Shah still says, of most of these artists picking up B/C graded films. Steering fortunately till now, though not without facing hardships, are two actors we see in this film- Irrfan Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui; savouring the two is a sheer delight. One complements the other, even though the latter has less screen time than the former.

Meet Ila (Nimrat Kaur, raw, natural), who, as one can note, practically reflects the plight of the average Indian middle class housewife. Here, her husband's tastebuds matter to her more than anything, probably because

We have minimal background score throughout the film. The camerawork is highly natural, as are the dialogues (Ritesh Batra, Vasan Bala) striking equivalence with the physical premise of the film (houses, local trains, a government office). Subtleties of various kinds provide icing on the cake. We have Shaikh, played by the radiant Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who is all set to replace Saajan after the latter’s retirement. You can never think of Nawaz as an actor playing a role in the film. He somehow directly adapts to whichever surrounding he is provided. He never acts, which is ironically the measuring bar for any actor. Shaikh pops up to lighten the screen every now and then. Saajan despises him, only until he finds in Shaikh the same warmth as he shares with