Audience Movie Review: The Hungry

Tisca Chopra’s film, The Hungry has been strategically released on Amazon Prime Video and after you watch this film, you’d laud the makers for taking this sensible step to directly launch a movie on a widely viewed platform. The Hungry is not Censor Board’s piece of cake. They would have never released it in the country, never even in the next 100 years.

The plot

As per the description on Amazon Prime Video, “The Hungry s Tulsi Joshi (Tisca Chopra), a widow and bride to be who comes to her own wedding seeking revenge for the brutal murder of her first born son. Based on Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, THE HUNGRY is about the violence that exists between power and love – a macabre fairytale set in the elite circles of north India.”

Directed by Bornila Chatterjee, this 1 hour 39 minutes long movie is something Indian viewers haven’t seen in the past 100 years of Indian cinema. The Hungry might not be a masterpiece, but it certainly is a historic movie, or let’s say will be marked as a legendary attempt in the history of Indian filmmaking. Following a quintessential suspense thriller narrative, the differentiating factor for this movie is ofcourse the climax. The intelligent and regular suspense thriller watching audience might be able to figure out in the first 30 minutes as to who is the killer, but what follows in the last 20 minutes of the movie, requires a huge stomach to digest.

Performances

Tisca Chopra is the back bone of the movie and you feel like thanking her for not going down a slippery way in Bollywood and doing rubbish cinema. A woman of her caliber and outstanding acting chops deserves all the accolades for playing the widow Tulsi Joshi who plans to take revenge of her son Ankur (Suraj Sharma of Life Of Pi and Phillauri fame). Her eyes do the needful and that’s all you expect from an actor par excellence. She’s tremendously gifted because Tisca handles this intense movie with a range of moments with great finesse. She becomes the seductive bride and fiancé at once, and the other minute she shows the pain and fire for revenge in her eyes for her son’s murder.

Let’s take a moment to accept the brilliance of Sayani Gupta, who plays the role of Loveleen, Naseeruddin Shah’s daughter. You must have seen many sensitive scenes of molestation and pain in world cinema (because India definitely doesn’t know how to aesthetically shoot such scenes), but, Sayani takes it 100 steps ahead and delivers a jaw dropping performance, for which she deserves standing ovations and all the awards, if any! Someone please give her more meaty roles and better films!

Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah delivers yet another splendid performance with no surprises about his incomparable acting abilities. As a man who is orchestrating a business take over and a marital alliance, who loves his daughter beyond the clouds, Naseer Sahab proves that this ensemble cast wouldn’t have been perfect without him. The terror around him as he walks the corridors of his palatial bungalow, and his body language as he witnesses his world crumbling down is thrilling! Full points to the director for his scenes in the kitchen as he chops vegetables and marinates meat with his skilled hands!

The supporting cast includes Arjun Gupta, Antonia Aakeel, Karan Pandit does the needful and none of them spoil the aura created by the veterans. That’s commendable.

Warning

Hint (not spoiler): Only Game of Thrones fans will be able to make peace with the movie at the end without any discomfort. It’s too intense for normal masala movie watching fans of Bollywood. You might want to keep a paper bag handy or be near the bathroom because weak hearts will need it. Even if you cuddle up with someone and shut your eyes, The Hungry will haunt you in your dreams.

You must watch the film before it falls into any controversy (which it might because of its explicit content) and as long as it is available to watch online. You can definitely skip it if you couldn’t survive three episodes of Game Of Thrones.