Judgmentall Hai Kya movie review: Kangana Ranaut dazzles in a movie about games of the mind | Bollywood

Evaluation – 4/5

We see it first upside down but also in the place. When we meet Kangana Ranaut in Judgmentall Hai Kya, we see her having her feet up and upside down. These are surrounded by framed pictures of Ranaut in extravagant and exaggerated costumes: like Pamela Anderson in red Baywatch swimsuit, or wearing the evil horns of Angelina Jolie. She is doing yoga, poirier against a lot of photos she takes regularly, then photoshopped, much like Govinda was putting up pictures as a cop and lawyer in Raja Babu.

Ranaut plays Bobby Grewal Batliwala in Judgmentall Hai Kya, a half-punjabi semi-parsi who grew up with the trauma of the death of his parents and who has since begun to bend paper boats and birds as a result of bad news , or more specifically the most interesting newspaper articles on domestic violence. She is a pbadionate dubbing artist who is photographed and imagines herself in roles she has only expressed for local markets. Although she feels "comfortable" volunteering to spend months in a psychiatric facility, she does not like her medications. This girl plays carrom with her Zoloft.

Watch Judgmentall Hai Kya trailer here

Bobby, as you may have understood, is quite a character. The public gets to know it as well as the childhood scars it faces and gradually becomes aware of its mental fragility, otherwise we would call it "weird". Later in Judgmentall, Hai Kya, a theater director unaware of all her past and labels, marvel at her courage: for him, she is simply a dream girl mania leprechaun. I wonder if Bobby should be more free of our judgment or, conversely, if most maniac-pixies heroines need medicine.

Judgementall Hai Kya, directed by Prakash Kovelamudi and written by Kanika Dhillon, looks like a simple and catchy comedy, but this elegant and meaningful satire has much more to offer. This is a film about gas lighting, a relentless psychological manipulation designed to discredit people in order to cancel their version of events. It is a question of insensibly and eagerly qualifying a condition instead of offering empathy. It's trying to "manage", not help.

The treatment is delicious. Daniel B George, composer of Sriram Raghavan's films like Johnny Gaddaar, keeps the rhythm of the dance, accentuating the mood changes while deceiving the viewer. During a police investigation, his antecedents unmistakably borrowed Ray Manzarek's keyboard solo from Riders On The Storm, a song with killers, roads, brains and toads, on deadly hitchhikers who might well be illusions. Nothing in this layered film is accidental.

Kangana Ranaut in a photo of Judgmentall Hai Kya.

If that were the case, the director of photography Pankaj Kumar would ensure that the accidents look good. I will not forget it soon. Kumar, one of the best directors of photography today (Haider, Ship Of Theseus, Tumbbad) has gained more fun and entertainment in a more subversive way with this film. he embodies the supersaturated world of Bobby and tinkers with the frame rate and contrast to describe it (and maybe even ours) mental states.

Judgmentall Hai Kya wears the clothes of a thriller. The owner of Nosy Dadar, Bobby, attaches to her tenant, convinced that he is ready to commit a crime. Things take a frightening turn and Bobby is devastated: was she right from the start, did she want the situation to happen or was she so desperate to prove her fixation that she had taken things by hand? Her tenant, Keshav, talks about eating meat and smoking, but how can that be done? As he reminds plaintively to the police, everyone is lying.

Rajkummar Rao plays Keshav with a placid complacency while the camera – taking Bobby's gaze – turns to objectify and move away. He is a calm man, with few words, but the talented actor makes the drought look bad. He gets into the skin, or maybe that's what we're supposed to feel, because he's certainly captured Bobby's imagination. Being brusque is not a crime, of course – but again, Photoshop no more.

Rajkummar Rao in a photo of Judgmentall Hai Kya.

The twists and coincidences are ambitious and Kovelamudi skilfully combines them, working on the film as both thriller and allegory as the pace only intensifies. Judgmentall Hai Kya has a lot to say, and not only via smart lines, although these are sharply pointed. We are informed that Bobby suffers from acute psychosis and that later, when she sees visions, one of her hallucinations calls another "cute".

Decidedly less cute is the sight of a badroach. Ranaut sees one everywhere, watering his house with pesticides and throwing slippers to crush him – this slipper hits a smiling Rao instead. As she loses control of life to focus on a badroach that nobody seems to see, it begins to work as a symptom of her growing psychosis. If not, could this tingling of his sense of badroach signal an urgent itch that she can not scratch but she absolutely must?

Bobby believes it, while she calls out stray policemen to tell them where she last saw the bug. The way Ranaut shines in her eyes when she talks about the badroach … this actress is really amazing. It's a finely-crafted movie, with stunning performances by Amrita Puri, Satish Kaushik and Jimmy Sheirgill, not to mention Rao, but it's all about Ranaut's shoulders and brings him vitality and credibility. Bobby may be a little exaggerated, but hers is an extremely subtle performance, and Ranaut – especially because of the perception battles she faces offscreen – is ideal for the piece.

Kangana Ranaut and Rajkummar Rao in an image of Wakhra Swag from Judgmentall Hai Kya.

During rehearsals for a new production of Ramayana (one where Dhillon skillfully badumes a wordy and self-referential cameo), Bobby stubbornly refuses to participate in an exercise of trust. This is not a character who will trust – at least not on command.

Judgmentall Hai Kya loses the whiz in the home stretch, striving to let the audience guess even when the climax is evident, and the creators could instead focus on the subtext. Investigative epiphanies also feel too simplistic about the narrative message and the general intelligence of the film. I am struck, for example, by the way they used the 1972 song, Duniya Mein Logon Ko, with a double-edged lyrical precision.

Read also: The first reviews of Judgmentall Hai Kya have arrived, fans call it the best performance of Kangana Ranaut

Watch this movie As a man shows that Bobby sees homilies on signs at the corner of a street, Judgmentall Hai Kya knows the difference between accepting and determining something. This is a film about mischievous leadership errors and the validity of our stories, especially those that are labeled incorrect. It's good to jump on a roach even if you are the only one to see it. At right angles, a bug is a feature.

First publication:
Jul 26, 2019 9:21 am IST