Dhadak 2: Shazia Iqbal destroys ancient Bollywood Dharma in the best Karan Johar production since Jigra

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This is ‘subversion on a massive level’ – to get seemingly civilised people to briefly think like wild animals. Comedians do this all the time. Joker did it as well. Directed by Todd Phillips, the movie pointed fingers at polite society for turning a blind eye to the mentally ill. Their ignorance, the movie suggested, is what compels folks like Arthur Fleck to take matters into their own hands. In Dhadak 2, Neelesh experiences many of the same indignities that were directed at Arthur in Joker. He is humiliated in public, kicked while he’s down, even urinated on. Dhadak 2 could’ve been the origin story of a mass-murdering criminal; had Neelesh transformed into a lunatic killer, you’d 100% understand why. But Dhadak 2 isn’t a comic book movie. It is, however, one of the most daring examples of what can be achieved in mainstream Hindi filmmaking.

Triptii Dimri and Siddhant Chaturvedi star in Dhadak 2.

There are elements of exploitation cinema — Tarantino’s favourite genre — in Dhadak 2 as well. But the tone isn’t nearly as gnarly as it could’ve been; for a real glimpse at how far things can be pushed past the boundaries of good taste, you needn’t look further than Mari Selvaraj’s Vaazhai, an autobiographical drama that he released last year. Incidentally, Dhadak 2 is a remake of Selvaraj’s debut film, Pariyerum Perumal. It follows a lower-caste man’s tentative romance with a girl from an upper-caste family. In Dhadak 2 — the film has had the misfortune of being retroactively rebranded as a ‘spiritual sequel’, much like the recent Kesari: Chapter 2 — Neelesh understands that he could get murdered for even speaking to someone like Viddhi, let alone for developing feelings for her.

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Chaturvedi plays him with a timidity that is more self-imposed than it is ingrained. He is driven only by one objective: to gain an education for the benefit of the same people to whom it has been denied. Neelesh also delivers a version of the line that made Chaturvedi go viral some years ago, when he told the presumably more privileged Ananya Panday that his dreams end where her struggles begin. In Dhadak 2, Neelesh gains admission into a law college through the SC/ST quota, something that the ingrates in his class never let him forget. They don’t understand that for him to even have the opportunity to be seated in the same room as them is essentially a miracle. Instead of celebrating him for swimming against the tide his entire life and challenging an oppressive system by merely existing, they ostracise him.

Siddhant Chaturvedi and Triptii Dimri star in Dhadak 2.

The harassment only becomes worse when he starts dating Viddhi, played by a never-better Triptii Dimri. She happens to be related to Ronny, who threatens to (honour) kill her on several occasions. It’s a familiar set-up, but one that has historically been sugarcoated in cinema by class-conflict, socioeconomic differences, and sometimes, plain geographical distance. All of these issues are code for caste. In India, every injustice can be traced back to a single source; it’s the disgusting ‘nala’ that we’re all drinking from. Income inequality, hunger, lack of education, denial of fundamental rights… Everything.

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We live in a country where a man can be killed for growing a style of moustache that the upper castes have claimed as their own. India is perhaps one of the few nations in the world where literal laws have to be enforced in order to prevent people from killing their own children. To do the dirty work for them, the cowards hire midwives for the nominal sum of Rs 50. These midwives murder female babies for a living not because they enjoy it, but because they’ve been subjugated and oppressed for their entire lives; it’s a family trade; their daughters will follow in their footsteps. They aren’t allowed to do anything else. What sort of society allows this?

These uncomfortable truths are rarely, if ever, spoken about inside our homes, let alone in our cinema. The Malayali filmmakers are leading the charge on this front as well, while Bollywood self-combusts at the very idea of discomfort. But, in recent years, there has been a growing wave of Hindi directors who’ve dared to expose us for who we are. Iqbal is the youngest to join their ranks, and she probably had other barriers to overcome. She’s a minority twice over. You can sense her growing pains in the Dhadak 2’s odd comic interludes, a needless song-and-dance number, and one-note soundtrack. Collectively, all of it feels like a giant Ormax Media note more than anything else. But her movie has more integrity than the entire filmographies of her colleagues put together. Her voice is bebaak. Dhadak 2 is the best film of its kind since Nagraj Manjule’s Jhund, and one that producer Karan Johar should hang forever and ever on his mantelpiece.