5 years of Jagga Jasoos: An underappreciated gem that you absolutely must watch

There is a very good chance that you have not watched Jagga Jasoos . Because if you had, it wouldn’t have been the box office disaster that it was when it released five years ago. Made on an estimated budget of over Rs. 130 crores, it managed to rake in a mere Rs. 83 crores from its ticket window sales, a response so horrific, that Ranbir Kapoor , who turned producer with this film, has never produced another movie till date. In our absolute dismissal of arguably one of the most delightfully experimental Hindi films to be ever made, we killed the possibility of a wonderful homegrown detective franchise.

As this charming, evocative, and innovative Anurag Basu film turns five, I implore you to reconsider whatever little you know or have heard about Jagga Jasoos and give it your precious time whenever you can, albeit unclouded by any preconceived notion or judgment. Jagga Jasoos is the story of an orphaned boy raised in a hospital who suffers from an acutely disabling stutter. Loved and cared for by the caregiving staff but lonely and neglected nevertheless, he saves the life of a mysterious man one day, who ends up fathering him, and teaches him how to communicate effectively through singing. Both kindred spirits, lost in a world where they feel ill at ease, find a home in one another. But their idyllic life is short-lived as one sudden day, the adoptive father leaves just as mysteriously as he walked into little Jagga’s life. The rest of the film is about Jagga trying to find him. But the stage that Basu sets for this search is a flight of fantasy, a leap of faith, and as madcap and full of wonder as an imagination colored by a heady, saturated mix of optimism, innocence, and joy can be. On the surface, Jagga Jasoos is a comic book adapted to screen, which marvelously complements its narrative style. For Jagga’s story is told by Shruti Sengupta (played by Katrina Kaif ), an investigative reporter who meets him while working on one of her stories, through three comic books, each covering a case that he solved, each bigger and gutsier than the previous one.

With 29 songs, Jagga Jasoos is a musical but not in the way Hollywood thinks of every Hindi movie or even the traditional idea of the genre. In this film, songs do not just further the plot but are used as a tool for the protagonist to communicate and navigate the world he’d have been lost in otherwise. Singing is the power that drives Jagga’s engine and fuels the many adventures that he embarks on. Of the 29, six are straight tracks that were released with the film. The rest are more like dialogues delivered in singsong written wondrously by Samrat Chakraborty, Devesh Kapoor, Debatma Mandal, Amitabh Bhattacharya, and Basu. They are so inextricably fused throughout the film that it’s difficult to discern where the dialogue ends and the song begins. Jagga Jasoos was Pritam’s fourth film with Basu after making memorable albums for his previous outings Gangster, Life in a Metro, and Barfi. It took him three years to put together the avant-garde melodious compositions for this audacious project. Bhattacharya and Neelesh Misra’s lyrics effortlessly combine the everyday and the philosophical, and the result is brilliant. Of them all, my favorite is Khaana Khaake, which uses a house party to illustrate how even in the larger scheme of things, we are all but guests, eating, drinking, and merrymaking our way through life, and would leave when our time is due. The other is Chocolaty Chunnu, an endearing attempt by a middle-aged stranger to befriend a reticent child and make him his own.

Saswata Chatterjee is plain terrific as Jagga’s mysterious adoptive father Tuti Futi—tuti taang, futi kismat, he tells us. Actually Badal Bagchi, a teacher from Kolkata, who gets involved in uncovering the arms racket in and around West Bengal, he is also fondly referred to as Bad Luck Bagchi, courtesy his hapless misadventures. You may remember Chatterji from Kahaani, in which he plays the cold-blooded, straight-faced murderer Bob Biswas. If he represented the grimy, threatening by-lanes of Kolkata in Sujoy Ghosh’s 2012 film, here is all kindness and warm sunshine. So is Kapoor, as the young adolescent desperate to piece together whatever little he can about Tuti Futi. As Jagga, Kapoor is vulnerable in a way few actors have the felicity to be. Since he doesn’t have a lot of dialogue in the film owing to his stutter, he uses all of his body to emote and masterfully replaces the lack of words with the rest of him. Sure, his approach to Jagga is Chaplin-esque, but not once does he let it reduce to a caricature. In fact, it elevates his performance, making it one of a kind, even in a filmography as diverse as his. As Shruti Sengupta, Kaif too is well-cast. Jagga’s partner in solving crimes, she completes the endearing trio of bumbling, fumbling adults with hearts that beat a little louder and curiosities a lot more fertile than others. As bad lucky as Bagchi, she brings a lot of charm and loveliness to the film. You may argue that the film’s plot is too dense, that it tries to pack in a lot more than it can handle, and that it’s too crowded with too much going on. That some of the action sequences and a lot of the CGI are clumsy. That Kapoor, who was around 31 when he started shooting for Jagga Jasoos, doesn’t look like a school student. That the film underlines its messaging as if we’re children. But that’s how it is structured. In it, Shruti is telling Jagga’s stories through his comic books to a room full of children. If you look at it, Jagga Jasoos is a film for kids, which, of late, has become a rarity in Hindi cinema. Its language—the cinematography (gorgeously done by Ravi Varman), the vivid color palette, the visually and imaginatively rich imagery, the peculiar characters, their escapades, the messaging, the music, the careful, meticulous detailing—all of it has been put together accordingly, and with a lot of thought and heart. But with themes as mature and serious as arms smuggling, cross-border terrorism, and a boy’s search for his missing father, it’s meant for everyone. There’s a lot to love about Jagga Jasoos. But what I admire the most is its understanding of love. Jagga’s attraction toward Shruti is not because of her beauty, intelligence, or any other remarkable quality. It’s primal and instinctive—she reminds him of his absent father; she’s as luckless as he was. Since Jagga has known love only through Tuti Futi, a love that completed him, nourished him, a love that he yearns for, and has made his life’s mission to get back, he can’t help but feel the same way about Shruti. Don’t we all try to recreate love as we first experienced it? A lot of people ask me what draws me toward my current partner (A) for we’re as different on the outward as two people can be. I gravitated towards him much like Jagga did towards Shruti. He reminds me of my younger sister, the first person I learned to love. I was 18 months when she was born. We’d been inseparable until we moved to different cities for education and then work. Ever since, without knowing it, I was looking for what I shared with her in every friendship, every relationship. When he laughs, A’s eyes shine the same way as my sister’s do. Their humor is the same too—guileless and effervescent. They both don’t know what to tell and what not to, narrating the inconsequential in painful detail and completely missing out on what’s important. And their love, it’s absolute. Needless to say, loving him came easy because it was the kind that I understood, appreciated, cherished, and was looking for. The kind that grows on you. Much like films that are underappreciated in their time but eventually find their audience. When not reading books or watching films, Sneha Bengani writes about them. She tweets at @benganiwrites.     Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .