Film: B.A. Pass; Cast: Shilpa Shukla, Shadab Kamal, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Deepti Naval; Directed by Ajay Bahl
It is an unusual work of cinema, which explores the darkest depths of the human consciousness
Somewhere towards the end of the protagonist Mukesh’s (Shadab Kamal) descent into a self-created hell, we see him standing shamelessly at the roadside soliciting sex, being picked up by three drunken burly men. A little later, Mukesh sobs in the bathroom, blood dripping to his feet in a trail of tell-tale brutality. The intense implicit violence that underlines this sequence reminded me of a similar process of sexual debasement undertaken by Mark Wahlberg in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. That was a film about the porn industry in the 1970s.B.A. Pass is set in present day Delhi – Paharganj, to be more precise. Bustling with sights, sounds and smells of doom and despair, it is a gripping story of a young financially challenged man’s journey into a world of prostitution. We could say, we have never seen this before. And we would be as close to the truth as this film tries to get.
