Pagglait: Social Drama Powered By Good Performances
Yogendra is freelance writer
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By Yogendra
First publised on 2021-04-14 07:35:38
About the Author
Yogendra is freelance writer
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Pagglait (now streaming on Netflix) is a social drama that touches upon many issues with subtlety, satire and dry humour. The biggest things going for it is that director Umesh Bist does not preach but shows situations and reactions and lets the viewer draw his or her own conclusions. The main drawback it suffers from is that characters are not given depth and some issues are just briefly touched. To be fair to Bist, not all can be probed deeply in a film that tells a particular story.
The story is Pagglait is simple at one level and complex at many others. Sandhya (Sanya Malhotra) loses her husband of five months but does not feel anything. Although the rest of the household is worried about her, she yearns for a Pepsi and a packet of 'chips'. The viewer gets to know that the couple did not get along and seldom spoke to each other. She was a misfit in the household. As the story unfolds, we get to see how greed makes people react in their own ways to the news that Sandhya's husband had made her the sole nominee to get Rs 50 lakhs of life insurance claim. We also see how the household discriminates against Sandhya's Muslim friend Nazia. Although tayyaji (Raghuvir Yadav) thinks nothing of having his daily peg, he scolds the younger brother of the deceased for smoking despite having performed the last rites of his brother. Greed is also shown as the underlying motive for the reactions of many members of the household.
At another level, the film is about self discovery. When Sandhya finds the picture of a Aakansha (Sayani Gupta) is her husband papers and comes to know that she was an office colleague, she needs to find everything about her husband's affair. She confronts Aakansha only to find out that her husband never cheated on her after the marriage. But when she sees that Aakansha has a flourishing career, it sets her thinking. In between, the change in her mother who first wanted to let her stay with her in-laws (we have two other daughters and have to think about their marriage, she tells her husband) but asks her to return with them after Sandhya gets Rs 50 lakhs, also shatters Sandhya. She makes up her mind to live life on her own terms.
Sanya Malhotra delivers a scintillating performance as a headstrong woman (she goes out with her friend to have golgappas and Pepsi even though the house is full of relatives who have come to mourn her husband's death) who is first not sure of her herself but quickly makes up her mind about what she wants in life. Sayani Gupta also impresses in her brief role. Shruti Sharma as Nazia puts in a good performance. All others, including senior actors like Ashutosh Rana, Raghuvir Yadav and Shheba Chaddha do full justice to their roles.
