Give Vishal Bhardwaj any textual content and he’ll infuse into it a lifetime of its personal. He is a grasp at variations, from his William Shakespeare trilogy (Maqbool, Omkara, Haider) to Ruskin Bond’s Susanna’s Seven Husbands (Saat Khoon Maaf). Now, he turns his consideration to among the best crime novelists of all time, Agatha Christie. And it is an enormous praise to verify that he does not allow us to down, but once more.
(Additionally Learn: Irrfan Khan stated no to Ishqiya after my No Smoking flopped, reveals Vishal Bhardwaj: ‘I did not decide his name for months’)
Adaptation notes
Vishal takes Agatha’s 1931 British novel The Sittaford Thriller and units it in Solang Valley and Manali in Himachal Pradesh. The snow-covered mountains and old-world mansions, nonetheless, are the one visible similarities between the tailored textual content and the unique one.
The characters and their backgrounds are steeped in native flavour and profit from India’s ethnic range. The detective investigating the homicide case is Charlie Chopra (Wamiqa Gabbi), a Punjabi woman, engaged to Jimmy (Vivaan Shah), an entrepreneur who has been arrested for the homicide of his maternal uncle, Brigadier Rawat (Gulshan Grover).
Gulshan, notorious for being forged because the ‘dangerous man’ all through the years, is definitely the one who’s been killed right here. The actor’s polished manner and the underlying evil streak lend him a beyond-the-grave intrigue that haunts all the storyline.
Talking of haunting, these of you who’ve watched the pilot episode that dropped again in June, would know that the present kicks off with a supernatural/horror component. Roy (Naseeruddin Shah), a mystical investigator, invokes Woman Rose, a spirit who guards the Solang Valley, to declare that Rawat is useless.
Costume designer Abhilasha Sharma’s eccentric garments, cinematographer Tassaduq Hussain’s staging, and Naseer’s immersive histrionics make that scene really feel like a web page straight out of a play. Agatha’s novel additionally began with a table-turning session, however the theatrical high quality of the scene in Charlie Chopra makes it amply clear that it isn’t a supernatural homicide thriller. Because it’s set virtually a century after the unique textual content, we see the opposite actors within the room share our amusement and suspicion in the direction of the mumbo jumbo.
Breaking the fourth wall
One other theatrical component used generously by co-writers Vishal, Anjum Rajabali, and Jyotsna Hariharan, is Charlie breaking the fourth wall. Charlie has a banging introduction, dancing in a baaraat earlier than she wears the detective hat and begins tracing the groom’s stolen jootis. It is solely when she receives a name about his fiancé’s arrest that we see her break the fourth wall with a Punjabi expletive.
Wamiqa appears and appears like Charlie, a hereditary detective educated properly by her estranged mom (be careful for that cameo). However her dropping sister di gaalis and exposition directed in the direction of us in the midst of a scene do not at all times land. This format continues to be very new to the Indian senses, and Charlie Chopra is barely a child step within the path of the Fleabags.
A fellow investigator in journalist Sitaram (Priyanshu Painyuli) solely makes the case for breaking the fourth wall weaker. Charlie is at all times discussing the nitty-gritties of the investigation with him, as an alternative of bouncing theories with us.
The approach does evoke prompt reactions at two explicit factors — when she asks us to look away whereas altering her garments, and when she shuts the door on us after an embarrassing second. These two cases make the viewers really participative by questioning their prying gaze.
Suspects and their tales
The USP of Charlie Chopra & the Thriller of Solang Valley is how seamlessly Vishal interweaves the person again story of every character with the investigation course of. It provides this whodunit wings as a result of each suspect has not solely a motive, but additionally the means and can to get the job completed. It is solely the one who took the leap in that second that ended up because the killer.
Throughout Charlie’s investigation, we come throughout a number of side-plots which might very properly be separate quick tales of their very own. There is a physically-challenged Parsi girl (Ratna Pathak Shah), a no-nonsense ill-tempered boy (Imaad Shah), a struggling author (Chandan Roy Sanyal) and his spouse with a magnificence parlour (Paoli Dam), a dialysis-bound former soldier (Danish Aslam), a retired military basic, a Muslim single girl (Lara Dutta) and daughter, your common genial mama and mami (Neena Gupta), and the obvious suspect – the home assist and his spouse (Hiba Shah).
All their storylines are fascinating to say the least, and like all luxurious whodunit, all roads result in homicide. Each character is so promising that as an alternative of getting them rushed by means of a three-hour narrative, I might have personally most popular weekly drops of an hour-long episode devoted to 1 suspect every. Say, like an Solely Murders within the Constructing. If there is a Season 2… hope you might be listening, Vishal Bhardwaj?
The razor-sharp means wherein the trailer has been reduce provides dollops of suspense and drama to the proceedings. It is peppered with adroit clueing and wilful deceptive. When you watch the trailer carefully, you’ll be able to see the assassin from a number of yards, if not a mile. However even for those who guess it, each the payoff and the journey to get there, really feel like a worthy experience.
Casting of all the Naseeruddin Shah household below one roof, a homicide by slamming the tabla on head, and an essential reference to Vijay Anand’s 1966 thriller Teesri Manzil are simply a few of the winks in Vishal’s screenplay. However the temper of the present is not all winks, and no knowledge.
There are not less than a few extraordinarily shifting moments, like Wamiqa fake-calling her estranged mom on the cellphone as an alternative of speaking to the digicam for an intimate dialog, or a soldier serving to out a wounded fellow, or a mom getting betrayed by a lustful father.
Even the unique music that Vishal inserts by means of the sequence ranges from the pulpy opening theme (cannot get Sunidhi Chauhan crooning ‘Charlie Chopra’ out of my head), Sunidhi and Rekha Bhardwaj’s pensive temper items within the above-mentioned shifting moments, and the meditative but suspenseful sprinkling of the tabla and the sarangi.
These desi touches of music, humour, and personalities make Charlie Chopra & the Thriller of Solang Valley an entire new expertise even for individuals who have learn the unique guide. And for the others, it could appear a bit overwhelming to start with, however would quickly engulf you into its world of deceit and empathy. Empathy, as a result of not one of the suspects are searching for energy right here, they’re solely attempting to get by by means of powerful occasions.
All episodes of Charlie Chopra & the Thriller of Solang Valley is streaming on SonyLIV.
