Blogpost 5th April 2020, Calcutta
#VOOTselect Original.
How often has a series made you hum #JoanOsborne’s One of us, questioning the ordinariness of God?
To be honest, for me to imagine #ArshadWarsi as any kind of criminal investigator, esp. a CBI chief forensic expert was a far ask. But I played along because this series, I was assured, had meat. Lots of meat and blood and mind and matter.
Asur sparked to life, very early in the story. It defined the margins and kept them there for a fairly long time, before blurring it towards the end. It makes you want to stand by the usual good fellas... And then... you catch a glimpse of this boy.
#VisheshBansal has that face. He is the reason I stuck, to what for many in hindsight, might seem an oversimplification of a battle of good vs evil. But for me, in any such crime / thriller narrative, there is always that one person, who makes the rest of the cast, labour hard to keep up. This young man’s stone dead challenge to Vishnu’s Dashavatara - now I dig that train of thought!
His Asura and their mythical demonisation, is what underlines the script. He is the most chilling thing about Asur. And he sets the tone for what comes next.
The beauty of this demon child, lies not in the brutality of his crimes (these are gory tales - viewer discretion is advised) nor is it the efficiency with which the Crimes are affected. It is rather the faith behind these psycho verdicts.
The idea that evil needs a “critical mass” for ensuring God’s own and urgent intervention.
I mean, we all have at some point questioned his/ her existence. We have wondered if divine justice is a lullaby to put us into a deep amniotic state...yes?
And it is this challenge that is brought out in this script. Shubh’s silence that envelops the persona of evil along the ghats, or time spent arousing inmates inside prison and later in deep meditative warfare, on the out.
It builds a sense of restlessness in the viewer’s mind. You start believing in part, all that he commits to: This boy delivers his lines with a decent amount of conviction.
Nikhil Nair, played by a very chop-chop, brooding and sharp witted #BarunSobti gives a standout performance. His script correctly and thankfully steers clear of all the Kalki- Yuga - Vishnu purana - new age Hindu mythology redux - and for good reason, clings to the science in the Forensics. It is an eventual mud wrestle that pits the Washington returned Delhi boy’s precise mind against a brilliant but flawed notion of a Benaras boy.
A very tense, ill at ease CBI officer Dhananjay Rajput (#ArshadWarsi) is expected to intuit his way around murders that rely on distorted and reinterpreted Hindu mythology. Didn’t quite cut it for me. I am more an #AdilHussain does the investigation, sort of viewer.
Then there is the earnestness of Lolark Dubey (#SharibHashhmi) who is efficient as the lackey, your mild mannered, slightly dim witted but born ally, and does the part of holding the fort for the good guys rather well. His words make the series lighter, easier to manage once the darkness sets in.
Nushrat (#RidhiDogra), is a strange second chapter that greets you intermittently as the voice of reason, love and longing from a past that you never really walked past. She lingers.
#AnupriyaGoenka as Naina Nair is annoying. Blame it on the character she was given to pitch or just the way she has brought forth her role. She makes the wife a complication. An adjustment. A necessity. And that punctures the speed of the script for me.
#SayakBhattacharya the cinematographer speaks in a highly versatile visual grammar that is quite arresting. One must note his skill
at making a mythology inspired criminal series that has to sit well in an Ozark, mindhunters, Fargo - fed universe. He does that. With aplomb.
But for everyone’s sanity and mine, it was the mad genius of #OniSen that went on an overkill and succeeded.
Because it all works. It comes together.
Albeit in the end, it appears a tad too easy to guess, for old timers like me, who live to read Japanese and Korean crime novels. But for any viewer, it holds its own rather well.
It works because the idea of good and bad slowly, ever so slowly start shifting through their boring shades. And quite honestly, become much easier for a common man to acknowledge and identity with. We don’t all naturally kill to sin. Sin is everywhere .. and all partake in it, in socially approved parts.
For me ASUR asks a few very high pitched questions.
Who is a serial killer? Do we breed them in our midst or do they come born evil, in varied shapes and sizes, pre-destined to unleash hell on earth? Are we all Asurs in small reasonable measures? What is the critical mass for the demonic to raise enough cain for the Gods to smote him and bring peace back on this lonely planet?
Or will a virus suffice?
Watch it and let me know if you find any answers in there. Or we could hunt together for these existential ones.
#VOOTselect Original.
How often has a series made you hum #JoanOsborne’s One of us, questioning the ordinariness of God?
To be honest, for me to imagine #ArshadWarsi as any kind of criminal investigator, esp. a CBI chief forensic expert was a far ask. But I played along because this series, I was assured, had meat. Lots of meat and blood and mind and matter.
Asur sparked to life, very early in the story. It defined the margins and kept them there for a fairly long time, before blurring it towards the end. It makes you want to stand by the usual good fellas... And then... you catch a glimpse of this boy.
#VisheshBansal has that face. He is the reason I stuck, to what for many in hindsight, might seem an oversimplification of a battle of good vs evil. But for me, in any such crime / thriller narrative, there is always that one person, who makes the rest of the cast, labour hard to keep up. This young man’s stone dead challenge to Vishnu’s Dashavatara - now I dig that train of thought!
His Asura and their mythical demonisation, is what underlines the script. He is the most chilling thing about Asur. And he sets the tone for what comes next.
The beauty of this demon child, lies not in the brutality of his crimes (these are gory tales - viewer discretion is advised) nor is it the efficiency with which the Crimes are affected. It is rather the faith behind these psycho verdicts.
The idea that evil needs a “critical mass” for ensuring God’s own and urgent intervention.
I mean, we all have at some point questioned his/ her existence. We have wondered if divine justice is a lullaby to put us into a deep amniotic state...yes?
And it is this challenge that is brought out in this script. Shubh’s silence that envelops the persona of evil along the ghats, or time spent arousing inmates inside prison and later in deep meditative warfare, on the out.
It builds a sense of restlessness in the viewer’s mind. You start believing in part, all that he commits to: This boy delivers his lines with a decent amount of conviction.
Nikhil Nair, played by a very chop-chop, brooding and sharp witted #BarunSobti gives a standout performance. His script correctly and thankfully steers clear of all the Kalki- Yuga - Vishnu purana - new age Hindu mythology redux - and for good reason, clings to the science in the Forensics. It is an eventual mud wrestle that pits the Washington returned Delhi boy’s precise mind against a brilliant but flawed notion of a Benaras boy.
A very tense, ill at ease CBI officer Dhananjay Rajput (#ArshadWarsi) is expected to intuit his way around murders that rely on distorted and reinterpreted Hindu mythology. Didn’t quite cut it for me. I am more an #AdilHussain does the investigation, sort of viewer.
Then there is the earnestness of Lolark Dubey (#SharibHashhmi) who is efficient as the lackey, your mild mannered, slightly dim witted but born ally, and does the part of holding the fort for the good guys rather well. His words make the series lighter, easier to manage once the darkness sets in.
Nushrat (#RidhiDogra), is a strange second chapter that greets you intermittently as the voice of reason, love and longing from a past that you never really walked past. She lingers.
#AnupriyaGoenka as Naina Nair is annoying. Blame it on the character she was given to pitch or just the way she has brought forth her role. She makes the wife a complication. An adjustment. A necessity. And that punctures the speed of the script for me.
#SayakBhattacharya the cinematographer speaks in a highly versatile visual grammar that is quite arresting. One must note his skill
at making a mythology inspired criminal series that has to sit well in an Ozark, mindhunters, Fargo - fed universe. He does that. With aplomb.
But for everyone’s sanity and mine, it was the mad genius of #OniSen that went on an overkill and succeeded.
Because it all works. It comes together.
Albeit in the end, it appears a tad too easy to guess, for old timers like me, who live to read Japanese and Korean crime novels. But for any viewer, it holds its own rather well.
It works because the idea of good and bad slowly, ever so slowly start shifting through their boring shades. And quite honestly, become much easier for a common man to acknowledge and identity with. We don’t all naturally kill to sin. Sin is everywhere .. and all partake in it, in socially approved parts.
For me ASUR asks a few very high pitched questions.
Who is a serial killer? Do we breed them in our midst or do they come born evil, in varied shapes and sizes, pre-destined to unleash hell on earth? Are we all Asurs in small reasonable measures? What is the critical mass for the demonic to raise enough cain for the Gods to smote him and bring peace back on this lonely planet?
Or will a virus suffice?
Watch it and let me know if you find any answers in there. Or we could hunt together for these existential ones.
