Jubilee review: A sparkler of a series that captures myths and legends of Hindi film industry

Roy Talkies, owned by the charismatic Srikant Roy (Prosenjit Chatterjee) is a powerful Bombay-based studio, buoyed by the talented Mrs Roy, also known as Sumitra Devi (Aditi Rao Hydari), a popular star in her own right. When we first come upon the pipe-smoking, attired-in-three-piece-suits Roy, he is obsessively searching for his new leading man, going through one showreel after another. And then his gaze falls upon the arresting face of Jamshed Khan (Nandish Singh Sandhu): how can he he corral this promising young man, whose heart is in theatre, and lure him into the movies? Can he turn him into Madan Kumar, the hero who will hold in thrall the people of this newly-created nation, and pull the debt-ridden Roy Talkies out of its troubles? Jamshed, blessed with the looks of a dashing matinee idol, has a line that resonates sharply: ‘Hum thehre Musalman, Bambai pahunchte hi naam, pehchaan sab badal diya jayega’ (I am a Muslim, the moment I reach Bombay, my name, my identity, all will be changed). In real life, this is exactly what happened with many Muslim actors — Dilip Kumar, Madhubala, Meena Kumari — of that time.

From this central conflict emerge the other threads that make up the show, directed and co-created by Vikramaditya Motwane (Soumik Sen has a co-creator credit), and written by Atul Sabharwal. Roy Talkies’ employee Binod Das (Aparshakti Khurana), while being a loyal servant to Srikant, desperately wants to be on the silver screen, and will go to any lengths to achieve that goal. His bumping into Jay Khanna (Sidhant Gupta), a feckless young man whose father owns a thriving theatre company, is a turning point.

So many of these characters in ‘Jubilee’ (the title comes emblazoned on screen in English and Urdu just like it used to back in the day) feel both filmi and flesh-and-blood, old-timey yet faintly recognizable, a combo that only cinema lovers can pull off. It’s quite clear that this entire team has worked in tandem – cinematography, music (a special shout-out for Amit Trivedi), costumes, sets, and other technical departments– to create perfectly-judged, knowledgeable, affectionate nostalgia. And everyone in the ensemble, even those who do not have as much screen time, shines: when the characters are on screen, there’s no crutch of swelling background music, telling us how to feel; that, straight-away, is a win.

Part of the fun of watching the show is playing guessing games: is Binod, who looks and sounds so much like Dilip Kumar, a stand-in for the thespian, or is he a combination of Ashok Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor too, with his questioning quiff of hair, and deliberate dialogue-delivery? It took me a while to warm up to Khurana, and then I saw how smartly he plays Binod: not as a fine actor, but a star who has been created by the accident of being in the right place at the right time. As someone in the series says: ‘star ho, actor banne ki koshish mat karo’, that old conundrum of mainstream movies, and it goes straight to the heart of the listener, who never gets past his feeling of being an imposter.

Is Sumitra Devi a version of Devika Rani, the beauteous star who wielded equal power in Bombay Talkies? Co-owner Himanshu Rai (are there shades of Rai in Roy Babu?) never quite found a handle on his capricious partner, famous for her glamorous outfits, and numerous flings: Rao Hydari, though over-utilizing her deer-caught-in-headlights stare, is a perfect fit for the steely-softness of Sumitra Devi, who loves and loses her one true love.

Is it Madhubala or Nargis or both that we see in the golden-hearted courtesan Niloufer Qureshi (Wamiqa Gabbi) who fetches up in Bombay to make a new life for herself? Gabbi is vibrant, bringing an old-school charm to a character who has vanished from Bollywood (watch out for a scene involving a girl opening the door to a stranger, borrowed from real life, used in an early 70s Raj Kapoor blockbuster).

And I’m sure Motwane and co had great fun creating the foul-mouthed, unlettered-but street-smart financier-cum-pirate Shamsher Walia (Ram Kapoor, terrific as always), who starts his sentences with a lusty ‘b.. d’: that character, in the movies, is a trope, but was he based on someone real? By the end of the series, that invective has been used so often for ‘Madan Kumar’ that it’s almost as if it is his legit surname.

How fortunes change is part of the warp and weft of the movie business. From being the scion of a prosperous theatre owner, Jay Khanna becomes a poor refugee looking for a job, willing to do anything that will help his family survive the squalid camp. How Jay, who’s given a great trademark gesture of clicking his fingers flamboyantly, climbs the pole of stardom, and how his rivals go down could very well incorporate not just one, but many real-life instances. The film industry’s rate of failures is always significantly higher than the successes, and those heartbreaks are buried under the pebbled streets of the studios that no longer exist.

The birth of Indian cinema may have taken place in British India, but the way the Bombay film industry was shaped by circumstance and happenstance in the 50s was the precursor to it becoming the biggest in the world. And that was the result of people from all over, caste-and-creed-no-bar, coming together to create that dream machine. It is sobering to realise how different things are today, with narrow and sectarian replacing liberal and inclusive.

‘Jubilee’ deftly takes us back to that black-and-white era when studios were the real power centres, owning their stars lock, stock and barrel. About reels made of inflammable material. About acting styles that were theatrical because of their roots in theatre. About the rise of playback singing, and loosening up of shooting-on-sets. These are elements we’ve seen before, but there are some which feel new, or at least I wasn’t aware of them.

One of them is the depiction of the refugee colonies in Bombay, and how the Sindhi contingent was so instrumental in the creation of studios and movie halls, which in turn spread the culture of movie-going. Another is the proliferation of the Russians who wanted to spread their propaganda taking the help of the film industry, and the covert activities of their American counterparts. The banning of film songs on All India Radio at the time is well known, but I’m not sure how many people are aware of the hidden American hand in the creation of the madly popular Binaca Geetmala (which pops up in the series with a changed name) on Radio Ceylon.

There’s a lot more to discover in ‘Jubilee’, and I will let you unravel its delights, which do go into a loop, but only very occasionally. At a point, almost everybody seems to be spying on each other through tapped telephones, and we see this repeat itself; the cagey ‘Russkies’ start weighing heavy. But almost everything else is just so right, and exactly how it should be, in this sparkler of a series.

I was blown away by Motwane’s debut ‘Udaan’, and have been waiting since then to experience that high that comes from a filmmaker’s unwavering commitment to art and craft and storytelling. With this new show, he has delivered in spades, and raised the bar high.

Jubilee cast: Prosenjit Chatterjee, Aditi Rao Hydari, Aparshakti Khurana, Sidhant Gupta, Wamiqa Gabbi, Ram Kapoor, Nandish Singh Sandhu
Jubilee director: Vikramaditya Motwane