This series is so deliberately far away from anything vaguely real, that it only leaves you wondering, what is it close to then?
A still from the series, Tandav, Picture Courtesy: PR
This is an extremely 'Bollywood' POV of what Indian politics is, or how duffer democracies work. The truth is inevitably stranger than fiction, of course. God knows it'd be brave to pull off an honest representation in these times when FIRs get fired off over tweets and hashtags. You'd expect the filmmakers are only too aware of the tightrope they're walking on already. Given the genre; that is, a national political drama.
But this series is so deliberately far away from anything vaguely real, that it only leaves you wondering, what is it close to then? A whole lotta bull, basically. And, no, I'm not even getting into how series like House of Cards and Succession have spoilt us—so far as the subject is concerned.
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Great to see everyone's come fully dressed up for the show though. The female politicians of varying vintage (Dimple Kapadia, Shonali Nagrani, Gauahar Khan, etc) in chic designer wear, touched up to perfection.
The man of the house (Saif Ali Khan), mostly in bridal Manyavar! Playing what? Prime Minister-Prime Minister, all through the day/play! He's the current PM's son, interested to be the next PM instead. The father (Tigmanshu Dhulia) is seemingly his only obstacle. Seemingly.
Watch the trailer right here:
While planning various moves (equally inconsequential/indecipherable to the audience), he grimaces, smiles, exchanges knowing glances, pretty much in his posh living room—doing some top-class mental math in his head.
By the end of the series he's had so much whiskey poured from and into customised crystal, you almost want him to stop for his liver—since the show won't—and you could do with some of that drink instead.
Tandav, at one end, is set in a palace. The grandness of which is incontestable. You could say the same for some of the crowd sequences. But this scale stops with the Raisina Hill architecture. The young Prime Minister, perpetually in waiting, has only one consigliere cum henchman plus hit-man (Sunil Grover), doing all the dirty work for him—from connecting to lowest level cops and peons, to snooping and executing the murder.
This is evidently an economy in recession. To be fair, India is in recession, as we speak. You can certainly sense that from the investment in writing that's gone into this show! It's so deeply lacking in layer that even the game of thrones in an imagined city-state like Mirzapur (from the eponymous Amazon Prime show), and its adjoining Uttar Pradesh districts, seem more meaty/complex than one about electing the head of Indian state!
Besides playing PM-PM, what's at stake here? The exalted position of the president of a students' union in a university modelled on Delhi's JNU! Who's directly behind this power play again? That same PM-in-waiting, obsessed with the minute shenanigans. Really?
It becomes unclear then, whether this series is trying desperately hard to be more like Prakash Jha's Raajneeti (2010). Or Yuva (2004), along with the original Rahman track borrowed from the Mani Ratnam gem. The central character on campus, with a permanent look of bewilderment in his eyes, is called Shiva (Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub), guessing named after the protagonist from Ram Gopal Varma's breakout 1990 campus classic.
Which isn't to suggest that student, state and national politics aren't inter-related. Also, taking nothing away from arresting presences of both Saif and Dimple, Bollywood's veterans, as the male and female lead.
But what exactly are we engaging with here? Between a university election, and passing the parcel for India's PM (and everybody wanting to be defence minister), within a family-led party politics?
Basically, 300-plus minutes of cardboard character introductions, over thoroughly dimwitted plot twists, and astonishingly incredulous turns. What happens after all of this? You don't wanna know. I suspect there was a lot more to be shot, scripted, and made sense of. Ugh, shoot us instead; we'll never know!
Tandav
On: Amazon Prime Video
Director: Ali Abbas Zafar
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia, Sunil Grover, Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub
Rating: *
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