Synopsis
Not 'Jhund'! Call it a team
A retired sports teacher transforms a bunch of teenage slum goons into disciplined football players against all odds.
2022 ‘झुंड’ Directed by Nagraj Popatrao Manjule
A retired sports teacher transforms a bunch of teenage slum goons into disciplined football players against all odds.
Bhushan Kumar Krishan Kumar Nagraj Popatrao Manjule Ramesh Pulapaka Shiv Chanana Gargi Kulkarni Meenu Aroraa Priya Mishra Savitaraj Hiremath Raaj Hiremath
Kalabalık / Jhund
What a smack in the gut .. goes beyond Sairaat .. Nagraj speaks up once again for his people .. So potent , colourful , powerful and musically with his collaborators Ajay-Atul and Sudhakar Reddy ..
When I love something now, I get nervous. It becomes a job to protect it from the Internet.
When I watched Jhund, I had the same impulse. A few hours later however, I found myself going through reviews or Googling the film. I first saw that the IMDb rating of the film showed 3.1/10. Then, when you went to the page, it changed from that to 4.6.
The spread of the ratings made the lie clear- most reviews logged it at 1/10. A simple lie because even if you say that some parts of the film didn’t work for you or you didn’t buy something, Jhund is one thing very clearly. It’s cinema. It’s a movie. You can make up…
Jhund is not actually a subversive film but it works like a revisionist one for the internalized storytelling aesthetics commercial Hindi cinema has been adopting for quite a while. The problem has been their majorly apolitical gaze, star centred screenplay, and an utter disregard for representation. The supposedly cinematic moments often break the organic flow just to occur in a frame(s) and please the audience. The cosmetic appeal becomes overwhelming and films come from a space of assumed understanding about a social group/individual than actual knowledge and lived experiences. When I say films, I am specifically talking about social messaging cinema in the commercial space, biographical dramas and sports dramas. Jhund belongs to each of these subgenres. It is very…
Jean Luc Godard once said "It doesn't matter where you take it from, what matters is where you take it to".
Ofcourse Jhund uses the standard template of underdog sports drama and uses familiar beats and tropes but the underdogs are authentic, they're in even worse state, some of them are not even identified, they exist but they're invisible to us and thus a mere representation becomes important, Manjule however does much more than that. He doesn't compromise on the depiction of the community he's representing for the sake of thrill, neither he offers trauma porn, he's focused, he's bitter, he's sharp but also genuine. And in process makes one of the most entertaining bollywood masala films I've seen in…
What a film. Nagraj Manjule really chose the kind of film we have already seen multiple times but in his own way constructed a beautiful film about the lower class people specially youngsters and the struggle around them through their lense superbly which he has done in the past too. He understand the situation, battles these people are facing on the daily basis and in a way even he made the mainstream film he showed the perspective of this kids with fairness and in authentic way. From the first moment the direction and the camera work was spot on which reminded me what he did in Sairat too, the way he find to capture the beauty around what people can…
Today was Rabindra Jayanti (Rabindranath Tagore's birth anniversary) and today's weather was also very charming, here in my locality...few hours ago in the morning, it was raining and then suddenly there was sunshine everywhere..numerous Rabindra Sangeets were been playing at nearby in a ceaseless way and when those fleeting submersive lyrics of heart-touching songs reached up to my ears, I was overwhelmed, lost in various thoughts — an ideal surrounding to get yourself cheery and upbeat but there I felt a sudden hinge over myself and I started reading one of Tagore's brilliant drama from my high school book. It's ACHALAYATANA, a tale about an arena of conflicting faiths which concludes itself in such a surprising manner that announces precis…
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Stunned by how well this film breaks and moulds itself seamlessly in a commercial Hindi film framework. Fantastic.
Aamir Khan in his reaction to this film said, "जो भी हमने सीखा है बीस तीस साल में, उसका इन्होंने... फुटबॉल बना दीया।"
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It just seems futile to write anything about it when it does everything so unabashedly and with pride, and everything is just so pitch perfect and never misses a beat (loved the fluid editing and incredible dolly zooms that blend the spaces in-between shots). It simply works as a reclamation of a genre by the marginalised (as Sarpatta Parambarai did last year), with incredibly detailed work for its milieu, lingo and a shared history for its characters. As Don says (and later Amitabh) in a very touching scene that his life has been no different than the others around him, and that they're bound by their collective struggle against a world that banishes them at every turn - be it…
Jhund is a very welcome deviation from the dozen generic formulaic sports movies that Bollywood produces every year. Manjule is able to effectively create a world that feels authentic and lived-in, and not once does he use poverty as a means for audience manipulation. The film is scattered with numerous characters and multiple storylines but there isn’t enough time for all to leave a mark. That said, there are plenty of hard-hitting scenes that make this a worthy watch - in particular the sequence in which Rinku Rajguru’s character is struggling to get a passport because of how Dalits essentially have no identity in this country.
And finally, the romance between Ankush and Bhavana was so ridiculously unbelievable that it became unintentionally comical.
What constitutes a nation? Is it the land? The wealth? The state? The institutes of eminence? It's surely not the people. Coz who are the people? The same ones we pretend do not exist?
Jhund is a film about nobodies. They aren't nobodies coz they don't have money or an education. They're nobodies coz they just do not exist. They're hidden in plain sight. The respectable figures of the society look the other way when these "people" are around. When they do not have the option of looking away, they *look down* at these "people." Never do they find it in them to look *at* these people, though. As persons. As individuals. As fellow human beings.
Jhund has moments that…
My first movie in a theatre of my hometown in over six years. And what better movie to pick than from the director who studied mass media in this very town.
There wasnt a single whistle when the title card appeared, nor was anyone excited when the the title song began, well above all there was just a little murmur when Bachchan sahab appeared on screen, but trust me when I say this, the crowd went absolutely berserk when Nagraj Manjule made his entrance. This is the testament of the greatness he has achieved. Someone who speaks the language of his people and has given them a strong voice, a rooted artist who like that plane at the end of…