Taish

When you can’t really take a side in a story and end up thinking about all those characters, the movie starts to sort of stay in your headspace. The latest Bejoy Nambiar movie Taish that got released as a series in Zee 5 was one such experience. In his usual style, Bejoy cleverly mixes eccentric outrage and emotional turmoil to show us a world where everything feels pretty grey.

Rohan and Sunny are best friends who sort of have done every crazy stuff together. Both are in the mood to have some good fun as Sunny arrives for Rohan’s younger brother Krish’s marriage. But the short-tempered nature of Sunny changed the fate of the family altogether. Relationships got broken, people died, and Sunny ended up being an unstable person who wanted to take revenge on someone. Where does all of this take our characters is what Taish showing its audience.

I am not comparing this with Badlapur, but somewhere you end up being in a similar space by the time you end watching this series. The least grey person or the most innocent/ helpless person are the ones who are alive by the end, and even they are in that terribly broken space. What I liked about this film is the way it constructed that path. It uses the first half in a back and forth narrative for the set-up, and we get to feel that shock along with a pretty detailed overview of the two sides. Pali, who is the bad guy (sort of), is also having personal issues that have broken his heart and made him a monster.

It is the second half of the series where every character is going through the repercussion of the crucial incident in the story; a lot of drama is happening. We are shown what has happened to the relationship between Rohan and Sunny. And every individual in the character pool is in a drastically different zone. Sunny is in an absolutely volatile space, and Rohan has decided to disconnect from the world. Taish is almost like a series of revenge-based killings happening, destroying too many dreams of too many people, and the reason for all that was a pedophile. I am discovering all these interpretations as I write this review, and for me, that is the appealing thing about Taish.

Jim Sarbh, who usually gets to play the most eccentric one in a gang for a change, gets to portray a character who sounds the most sensible. He depicted the shift in Rohan in an affecting way. Pulkit Samrat as Sunny is in a mostly monotonous space. Still, for the story, that performance was somewhat what they were looking for, the Casanova of the group becoming a blabbering revenge seeker. Harshwardhan Rane, as Pali feels like a more refined display of his own performance in Sanam Teri Kasam. Kriti Kharbanda as Rohan’s girlfriend handled the drama neatly, and Sanjeeda Sheikh as Jahaan was also significant. She and Rane shared intense chemistry on-screen, which eventually helps the movie in establishing that disturbing picture it wanted to create.

Bejoy Nambiar’s presentation of movies has a character-driven nature in general. He uses events only as a means to explore characters. Here again, that method is getting followed. The visuals have contrasting colors with high saturation depicting the characters’ emotions, and the shots are mainly on the tighter side. The mood of the movie is maintained throughout the film by Harshvir Oberoi. Bejoy manages to squeeze out the best from his actors. I enjoyed watching how he kept the seemingly cheesy romantic parts in the movie cinematically appealing by adding a sense of realness to them. The background score by Govind Vasantha in the Pali-Jahaan portions were beautiful.

Despite having flop films under his kitty, the reason why Bejoy Nambiar becomes an exciting filmmaker to look forward to is the way he has a hold over the craft. Taish is a compelling thriller. The movie/series manages to manipulate you to think about the characters, and the numbness we feel at the end of the movie is a result of good writing.

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