Priyanshu Painyuli Recalls ‘I Connect With A Film Like That’

Of all the films that the enterprising producer Madhu Mantena produced with his partners at Phantom Productions, Bhavesh Joshi holds a unique position.

Harshvardhan Kapoor, who made little headway in his career despite an author-backed role, doesn’t play the title role in Bhavesh Joshi Superhero. Anyone could. This is a film about pricking awake the conscience, so well written, and so successful in downplaying the image of the typical hero. Anyone could be that prick. On the other hand, no one bothers. Why should they when all you get for trying to change the status quo is a death in the gutter? What makes this film an important testament to the need to make your voice of protest is the language used to convey that urgent need to raise one’s voice.

Though wrongly marketed as a superhero film, Bhavesh Joshi tells us why the cult of superheroism needs to be urgently replaced by a more practical and tenable form of working-class heroism. Hence Sikandar (Harshvardhan Kapoor) is at first happy being a pseudo-reformist spewing reformatory jargon in smoky pubs until something happens to put him on red alert.

The strong but wobbly film has a slow, steady, and solid buildup to a climactic outburst that is so powerfully shot it leaves us with a sense of foreboding for the hero whose mask peels off to reveal the face of the ordinary man suffering the indignities of a system that allows politicians to fleece and flee.

Nishikant Kamat makes a menacing villain. A politician on the corporator’s level, so more into street goondaism than a more powerful politician, who dreams of controlling Mumbai. What makes Aditya Motwane’s film on the extraordinary heroism of ordinary people is its relentless statement on unostentatious heroism.

Harshvardhan Kapoor steps into the heroic mould without losing his sense of ordinariness. The young actor excels in conveying the helplessness and growing rage of the average youngsters who watch the dance of plunder, this time it is Mumbai’s water supply that plundering politicians desire.

How we look at Sikandar (Kapoor)’s efforts to stop the plunder is entirely reliant on how effectively we accept Harshvardhan Kapoor as an actor who excels in being a man who won’t give up Anna Hazare’s dream of re-structuring society. Harshvardhan gets ample opportunity to play a character who gets caught in definitions of heroism from an internet joke to a suicidal vigilante. He makes judicious use of the character’s dilemma to build a structure of doddering idealism.

But it is Priyanshu Painyuli Harshvardhan’s brother-in-arms who steals the show.

Bhavesh Joshi is a film that catches us off guard. Its message of social awakening spotlights a film that is brave and bleak. Shot with a striking sense of the raw and the real by cinematographer Siddharth Diwan, this is a film that salutes a wounded civilization without resorting to flag-waving patriotism. It doesn’t offer instant solutions and homemade remedies against corruption in politics. It tells us all to go out there and try to make a difference.

Bhavesh Joshi is an important film that shouldn’t be missed.

In an interview with Subhash K. Jha, Priyanshu Painyuli, who played the revolutionary title role, spoke of playing the working-class superhero.

“Bhavesh Joshi for me is, I think, will be always one of the most special films I’ve done. I connect with a film like that. I mean, even today when I meet people, there are audience members, there are young guys, there are youths of all kinds and everybody actually from different age groups, not just youth… who is connected to that film.

Why do you think it resonates with youngsters, even six years after its release?

It was set in 2016, but it talks of friendship, it talks about revenge, it talks about the political environment, it talks of two people from just a very, very normal background trying to take a stand, to make a difference. So, I think there was so much in the film, emotionally, what it was trying to say, the compassion between two guys, you know, learning from one another, friendship, love, etc. I just feel that it’s one of the most wholesome films directed by Motwane. For me, it was special because I got to work with a genius like Vikramaditya Motwane. I got to work with such a beautiful team at Phantom Films. We had Siddharth Diwan on the camera, you know, shooting us.

We had Aditya Kanwar and Deepu Kumar with production design. We had Amit Trivedi with the music and, of course, my actors, Harshvardhan Kapoor and Ashish Varma. It was one gem of an experience and will always be cherished, I think, for my lifetime as an actor. It was my, I think, one of those door-opening films where people kind of recognised me. Very special to me as I played that part of Bhavesh Joshi. As I said, I always connect with a part like this, which is very close to reality. I think I’m a little bit of Bhavesh Joshi in my real life. But, of course, not fighting and without the violence. I think, for me, the most beautiful, memorable moments came when the film was released and that Friday when everybody wanted to talk to me and discuss with me how and who am I, first of all, and, you know, why was I chosen to play Bhavesh Joshi. What felt very overwhelming was a lot of audience members who didn’t even know me… they told me that when they were watching the movie, just during the interval, they wanted to search for me. Because at the midpoint, my character dies, Bhavesh Joshi dies. And they wanted to see who am I as an actor. And they actually felt very, very emotional. Some of them said they cried. When they know Bhavesh Joshi died in the film. It feels special because then you’re touching the right chord with the audience. And that’s been always my approach as an actor, to create characters which can always live with the audience. You can go back to it and you can, you know, relate to him. And it touches you emotionally. The film kind of got its due later on Netflix when it came out.

I still keep telling people to go out and watch it for it. And people do repeat watch. And even now when people go back and, you know, they see it through my profile. They explore this film and they come back and they, you know, message me. They say, oh my God, why did we miss this film? This was such a beautifully shot film, a beautiful friendship. And everything in this film is so correct. You see the kind of delayed reaction. I would just like to say that you don’t make such vigilante films in India. It’s very, very rare. And this was done by Vikramaditya Motwane in the finest possible manner. It did not reach the audience at that point in time. But, I really think that since that time now, in six years, it has spread across. And I always keep saying I have found a fan following through Bhavesh Joshi internationally, across the world, all thanks to it being online, on OTT. And I just hope that it keeps spreading. And if people have missed it, they should still go and watch it.”