{"id":7472,"date":"2016-04-12T14:34:34","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T09:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=7472"},"modified":"2016-04-12T14:34:34","modified_gmt":"2016-04-12T09:04:34","slug":"aranyak-review-netflix-raveena-tandon-parambrata-chatterjee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=7472","title":{"rendered":"Aranyak Review: Too many cooks spoil this promising broth"},"content":{"rendered":"\nI<\/span>n the third episode of Netflix\u2019s Aranyak<\/em>, an entitled young man under judicial review stubbornly claims that he slept eight times with a woman before she called him out for rape on the ninth time of asking. \u201cSex without consent at any stage is rape,\u201d a righteous police officer sermonises as a way of dumbing down \u2018No means no\u2019 for the audience. It\u2019s an odd scene, forced upon the narrative that serves little purpose other than to desperately clutch at some elusive woke sensibility. Perhaps to the creators, this is some sort of politics to espouse in a show that teases many but carves none. Aranyak follows most stereotypes about life in the hills, the inherent mysticism of the forest (Aranyak means one who dwells in the forest) but it is let down by poor casting, acting and a whole bunch of ideas that are simply present without any conviction or vision.\n\n

Aranyak follows most stereotypes about life in the hills, but it is let down by poor casting, acting and a whole bunch of ideas that are simply present without any conviction or vision.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nSet in the fictional town of Sironha (with clear hat tips to Himachal) Raveena Tandon plays Kasturi, a local SHO who is about to go on sabbatical. She is replaced by Angad, Parambrata Chatterjee at a moment when the abduction and rape of a teenage foreign national brings the two mismatched cops together as they navigate petty local politics, personal demons and the myth of a folksy beast. For some reason that is best known to the casting team, Tandon plays a 30-something mother that she can\u2019t pass off for while Ashutosh Rana \u2013 only few years her senior \u2013 plays her retired father-in-law. The first episode does an underwhelming job of introducing all characters because it simply runs through their arcs like it were a credit reel of faces rather than a peek into their lives and stories. There are scheming politicians, shady marriages, all-round bureaucratic intrigue and a handful of spoiled teenagers. The last one is a welcome addition to the spoilt brats of the OTT space because for a change, young adults are consistently finding reference points in the entertainment they consume.\n\n

The first episode does an underwhelming job of introducing all characters because it simply runs through their arcs like it were a credit reel of faces rather than a peek into their lives and stories.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nBilled as a return to belated form of the once star Raveena Tandon, Aranyak is instead, anchored by the wonderful Chatterjee. Tandon\u2019s inability to catch the local accent \u2013 she sounds Haryanvi rather than pahadi <\/em>\u2013 is only one of the many flaws in performance. As a workaholic mother, who is poor with her motherly instincts, there should have been ample material to give Kasturi layers of nuance and yet she is reduced to a loud, short-tempered dolt. Even the limits of this definition could have elicited a more comprehensive performance from someone else but Tandon looks out of her depth, unsure of the difference between internal and external conflict. Instead, it\u2019s Chatterjee\u2019s eloquent, almost mesmerising portrayal of a cop dealing with loss in the back of his mind that steals the show. Angad\u2019s righteousness has cost him dearly in the past, but he continues on the same path still, as the man who can\u2019t help but do his job right \u2013 yes, there are those.\n\nA host of tertiary characters, most of them decent but forgettable in the end make this soup too dense to be able to sift the bran from the bile. The series has a decent The Killing<\/em> like pace with suspects and mysteries changing and interchanging positions but eventually, there just isn\u2019t enough depth to any of the antagonists to care what they are hiding or what they are about to reveal. Vulgarity amongst kids, drugs, rape, sexism are all new-age topics but in the hands of creators who have evidently been lifted from the cable tv age, there is precious little that is new here. \n\n

Aranyak becomes serviceable because it hides its secrets well, but in terms of performance or presentation it lacks on more ends than it can ultimately conceive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nIt\u2019s clear what the writers believe are \u2018woke\u2019 illustrations of life in the hills without so much so a perspective of their own. Last year\u2019s SonyLiv series Undekhi<\/em> and Amazon Prime\u2019s The Last Hour<\/em>, did a better job of contextualising life on the mountains from the perspective of the outsider, so as to not exotify it beyond the realms of possibility. Chillums, drugs, folk tales and myths are all imperial ideas that most creators in today\u2019s day and age just can\u2019t seem to go beyond.\n\nPerhaps the greatest criticism of the show is in the way it wastes Ashutosh Rana. As a delusional and retired constable, Rana is underused and calamitously unrealised. It\u2019s one thing to write stories poorly, it is another to make brilliant actors like Rana look patently mediocre. When the same scene of a police car running across a bridge with snow covered mountains as backdrop, plays across different episodes, you know that the story is trying to inherit a mysticism that it cannot for the life of it bring itself to write. It wants to convince you through the pleasures of sight rather than the conviction of its narrative. Like any whodunit, Aranyak becomes serviceable because it hides its secrets well, but in terms of performance or presentation it lacks on more ends than it can ultimately conceive.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raveena Tandon was supposed to be the headline act in this series, but she is one of the weakest links in what is a serviceable show, almost entirely salvaged by the calm elegance of Parambrata Chatterjee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[11482,11483,893,1341,4433,3655,291],"class_list":["post-7472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-aranyak","tag-hindi-tv","tag-indian-tv","tag-netflix","tag-parambrata-chatterjee","tag-raveena-tandon","tag-tv"],"yoast_head":"\nAranyak Review: Too many cooks spoil this promising broth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Raveena Tandon was supposed to be the headline act in this series, but she is one of the weakest links in what is a serviceable show, almost entirely salvaged by the calm elegance of Parambrata 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