What’s it like seeing Tees on its tehrvi

A still from ‘Tees’

Watching Dibakar Banerjee's film, Tees - which I think is a stellar piece, if not a surefire masterpiece - feels a bit like public drinking in a prohibition state.

I'm in a packed hall, surrounded by eager younglings for an evening show at the India Film Project's fun fan-meet at Mehboob Studio in Mumbai.

Only, the picture is temporary lifting a ban on itself. Nobody's watched its trailer, stills, or knows much about it. It's not that the state has imposed this prohibition.

It's Netflix, the producers, that refused to platform its own movie, after funding Dibakar and his cast-crew to make what they wished, coming "from a position of strength." Why'd they do that?

Tees opens with the shot of a computer-generated pussy-cat negotiating on the phone with an Indian gigolo, Anhad (Shashank Arora), who moonlights as a writer, in the year 2042.

A book that you once spot in Delhi-based Anhad's bed is Gyarahvin-A Ke Ladke (Boys from Std XI-A) - actually authored by Gaurav Solanki, the co-writer of Tees, imagining his character reading him in the future!

Anhad has himself written a book titled Tees. It's on the communal riots that took place in 2030, and that can't see the light of day, because the nightmare of censorship has descended on it.

Filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee. Pic/Getty Images and Screenwriter Gaurav Solanki. Pic/Instagram/@gauravsolanki__

Much as the film named after it - although I'm hardly at a secret screening. Technically, Tees isn't banned. Treat it like drinking at a gymkhana on a dry day, since the consumption is private. As with film festivals, in general.

Keen on a writing career still, the talented young man in Tees compiles a family cookbook that the state demands 72 cuts on! I'm guessing readers of books have exponentially expanded in the future for the Indian state to care so much; they don't, as much, currently.

But the movie isn't merely a peek into what lies ahead.

Which is anyway the weakest link, since it's the hardest thing to convincingly get right - whether about technology, or politics. We can barely grapple with what's going on, being at the cusp of it, in the present, that feels like future, every other day.

The screen simultaneously flits between two other timelines: circa 1989 (Kashmir), and 2019 (Mumbai), with multiple characters, and separate stories, united by a common theme, i.e. displacement, and exclusion.

Must we delve deeper into these subjects? No.

A critical damage that, I suspect, the more intellectually inclined viewers do with ‘word of mouth' for movies - that's inherently a visceral and emotional medium - is academically examine/ruin them to a point that the recipient of their review is convinced the damn thing must be a debilitatingly dark, artsy bore.

Recent case in point: Neeraj Ghaywan's thoroughly mainstream Homebound (2025).

Firstly, at 120 minutes flat, that could've even been longer, Tees is a tightly entertaining/engaging picture - from the carefully picked ambient sounds, cinematographer Ranjan Palit's visual palette, to the seemingly specific backdrops, and lots and lots of observational humour - toplined by finest actors bringing their A-game.

As in the flawless Manisha Koirala (1989), ageing over time; Huma Qureshi (2019), playing an overweight lesbian, totally disregarding the male gaze; indeed, what's there ever not to love about Naseeruddin Shah, even if in an extended cameo, as a potty-mouthed Man Friday, in 2042!

Also, Dibakar-Gaurav's script isn't so clever that you can't figure what's going on - just clever enough that you feel rewarded as a viewer, once the Easter eggs fall in the same basket.

That is, the moment you realise the timelines belong to members of the same family, over three generations. "This is a family film," as Gaurav calls it. I agree.

There's so much at play, you wanna watch it twice - once for the plot, the second time on for the detailing.

Structurally, the best Indian parallel to this scripting devise that I could think of is Anand Gandhi's stroke of brilliance, Ship of Theseus (2012).

I asked Dibakar about this. He kinda agreed. Of course, his Love Sex Aur Dhokha (2010), and its sequel (2024), simultaneously follow three story-lines as well.

Since Khosla Ka Ghosla! (2006), Dibakar has directed 10 films, if you count the shorts, including the crackerjack zombie segment in Ghost Stories (2020) for Netflix, that has been sitting on Tees, edited during the pandemic, for at least three years.

Clearly, no matter how accomplished a filmography, the hustle never ends? I ask Dibakar, 56.

He says, "Those who have a music band, and make films, can tell you how it keeps them young. Because you're forever struggling. [Each time] it's Khosla Ka Ghosla, all over again!"

An urge to express altogether anew being the age-defying nectar - perhaps the opposite of a mundanely repetitive day-job.

That said, why would Netflix finance a brilliantly made film, but keep it from its audience? Ideally, that can't be a question for Dibakar, but I pose it to him, nonetheless.

He says, "Let me give you an example. You all have parents, partners, children… Sometimes, when you try and talk to them, [they simply shut you off] with the reaction, ‘Well, you won't understand'."

That's what he was kinda told, I guess. As I write this, the next Hindi film release on Netflix is Single Papa.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture.
He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.