The ugly heart of the capitalist world

Madhur Bhandarkar's Corporate is a detached portrayal of people with money power

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr Delhi

Madhur Bhandarkar is quietly taking a close cinematic look at some of the sore points in today's Indian society. Chandni Bar focussed on bar girls and crime boys. Page Three commented on the journo-celebrity nexus. Corporate moves up the social ladder into the thick of the gory goings on inside competing companies. The three films form a compositional frame of three social levels in different hues of red: energy, agony, blood and tears. While Bhandarkar is not pretending to be a Krysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours Trilogy, he has effected something similar.

Bhandarkar's virtue is that he is not an auteur, and that he does not want to be if he can help it. There is no personal signature as yet in his framing of the scenes. Taking a neutral stance with regard to his subjects, Bhandarkar is just keen to look at all the characters in their own terms. The tone of detachment can leave the viewer wanting to know where the filmmaker’s own sympathies lie.

Bipasha Basu as the ambitious, aggressive, efficient top executive Nishigandha Dasgupta, who is willing to break rules for the company and for herself and for the man she loves, emerges as a credible character. Basu's love interest in the film is Kay Kay Menon playing Ritesh, the down-on-luck honcho who is also the brother-in-law of Sehgal, the owner of the company where Basu is working as vice-president. Deglamourised Basu brings a certain conviction to her portrayal despite her limited histrionic repertoire. Today's urban Indian is not truly an Indian self. The urban Indian especially in the corporate world is sufficiently westernised in emotional responses as well. The cultural ghost of the West is to be found in a clearly etched fashion among the corporate denizens. Of course, the soul beneath the mannerisms and the power dressing is unmistakably Indian. Basu's Nishi is the typical Indian woman who does all she can for her man, even to the extent of effacing her own identity. She is aggressive with all other men. She destroys without compunction her counterpart in the rival company. Kay Kay's performance as Ritesh is neat. There is nothing soul-stirring about it. These are the two characters whose lives are at stake in the mortal combat of the two contending corporates in the film.

In the usual line-up of villains is the heartless owner, Sehgal, who has no compunction in sacrificing Nishi, the company's vice-president, and joining hands with his arch rival, Marwah, who fawns on godmen and manages to turn tables. Seasoned Raj Babbar plays the character with quiet aplomb. And there is the wicked state finance minister and the cunning union finance minister, who settle corporate battles on a quid pro quo basis without looking garishly sinister. The issues of disinvestment and foreign direct investment form an important theme of the film, and in true Hindi film fashion, Bhandarkar shows the murky operations without any hint of subtlety. The corporate world is after all not subtle in its dealings. The filmmaker achieves a show of neutrality while relying on the background narrator as well as the peons in the office to comment on the low life in high places.

Corporate has been produced by Sahara One, a corporatised movie production unit, and Bhandarkar is doing almost a journeyman's assignment, applying his craft to make a film which the "studio" wants to be made. Does that compromise the director? Bhandarkar is almost indifferent to it. He uses the opportunity to look into the ugly heart, if not into the dark soul, of the capitalist world.