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30. Aligarh Movie Review

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Director Hansal Mehta’s Aligarh is an intense movie powered by sincere performances and an amazing screenplay. The movie is a must watch for all cine-lovers who appreciate atypical movies more than mainstream movies with unnecessary item numbers and exaggerated action sequences. It is based on the true story of Professor Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras who was suspended from his university because of his sexual orientation.

Manoj Bajpayee brilliantly plays the character of Professor Siras, a Marathi teacher at Aligarh University, whose wife left him not long after their marriage because she found him ‘boring’ and his relation with his family was not so healthy. Though Bajpayee has given some amazing performances in the past, this could easily be called one of his best. He portrays the character of a homosexual man who is uncomfortable with people describing his feelings in three letters-- g-a-y. He is also a poet who believes poetry can never be understood in words but in the pauses, the gaps and the silences. The most memorable scene of the movie is the one in which he, isolated - physically and mentally- hums a LataMangeshkar tune with his eyes closed; it is his changing expressions that convey his deep felt anguish, anguish that he cannot express in mere words. RajkummarRao yet again proves his acting prowess and does full justice to his character of Deepu, a journalist who is not interested in masala news but is eager to dig out the truth. His relationship with Professor Siras is heart warming. The friendship between the heterosexual man and the homosexual man is shown as normal as the friendship between any two individuals regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

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The movie begins with Professor Siras being driven to his home on a rickshaw, and the rickshaw puller follows him to his room. Then we see two men with a camera following them, shrieks are heard and four university officials arrive on the scene. Hereafter, Professor Siras is ‘exposed’ as a homosexual, and is consequently suspended from the university, just three months before his retirement. He struggles as he is secluded after his “kaand” goes viral on media with the university officials (who promised him not to disclose the incident) giving interviews in the media one after the other. He is denied even a meeting with a doctor despite making an appointment and has to keep shifting his residence as the landlord makes stupid excuses to make him leave. In the midst of the dirty politics of the university, activist groups from Delhi, journalist Deepu and one of Siras’s colleagues, Professor Tahir Islam (played by Sukhesh Arora) who is a graduate from Oxford, try to help him file and fight a case against the journalists who invaded the privacy of Siras and his ‘friend’- two consenting adults but homosexuals ‘unfortunately’! Even after winning the case, Siras believes India is not a country where people like him can lead a respectable life. May be he foresaw things; homosexuality which was decriminalised in 2009 was again criminalised in 2013.

The scene in which Deepu, who had never made love to any woman before, makes love to his colleague Namita (played by DilnazIrani) is followed by the scene in which Professor Siras makes love to his lover. The two are not depicted only as sexual partners but also those who share warmth in their relationship, who bond over their same taste for music. The fact that Siras’s ‘friend’ is found missing shows the plight of the person who is not just oppressed due to his lower class and caste but also because his sexuality is not accepted by the society.

The movie doesn’t follow a strict linear progression which adds to the drama. There are no songs in the movie; it didn’t need any (with old melodies playing on Siras’s tape, and his poetic words). The cinematography is good. Even the minor characters play their part well: Deepu’s fellow journalistTashi (SumitGulati), the corrupt and jealous university officials, and Siras’s lawyer played by AsishVidyarthi. Saumya Gairola II Year

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