New Delhi: From the 2010 satire Peepli Live to the 2022 web drama series The Broken News, the entertainment industry has frequently spotlighted the news media. Journalists can be heroes or callous, dogged in their pursuit of the truth or as corrupt as the police and politicians they cover.
In his new short film The Sadist, director Kundan Shashiraj interrogates the media and its role in manufacturing entertainment, consent and hate.
The movie opens with a man eating dinner with prime time news playing on TV. His eyes are wide open, transfixed to anchor Aman Dev Sinha (Danish Husain) on screen covering a ‘burning issue’.
The scene then shifts to how the news is being produced. It’s a regular day at work for the anchor, until he gets a call from his brother that his wife has died from a massive cardiac arrest. What follows is a tale of a vicious cycle of violence, mirroring the hate shown on prime time television as ‘newsworthy’.
“In the last few years, I have seen people around me change. Polarisation and hatred has become the norm, and I was wondering where this was coming from. That prompted me to make a film on the media and their role in this increasing hate and violence all around us,” said Shashiraj. He drew on his 10 years of experience as a journalist to script his 30-minute film.
The Sadist—starring Vipin Sharma, Danish Husain, Shishir Sharma, and Vineet Kumar—gives space to the pressure on ground reporters to get a ‘good byte’ as well as producers who live under the tyranny of TRP.
The film follows Aman after his wife’s death to look at how journalism has emerged not as the fourth pillar of democracy but a cutthroat space where the most important thing is who breaks the story first, whatever the cost.
Depicting the reality
Unlike Rann (2010) or Page 3 (2005), The Sadist was shot on a shoestring budget. The film’s cast worked for free.
“We shot in three days, and the post-production was done in 3-4 months. Actor Vineet Kumar even got the food he is eating in the first scene from home,” said Shashiraj.
Vipin Sharma does a stellar job in holding the suspense of the narrative, playing a character who revels in violence. The portrayal highlights the culture of supply and demand, where certain news attract more viewership.
In one scene, three local journalists compete with each other to give the best closing line on camera. At the backdrop are police barricades, with ‘Jamras’ written on them, presumably a reference to Hathras and the rape that took place there.
One of them even says that he will continue to report even though the police won’t let them enter the village. But when Aman arrives, he is allowed to pass through, because he is a ‘national’ reporter. Once inside, he almost heckles the victim, and gets visibly upset when she does not respond.
“Why can’t you brief them properly?” he asks his subordinate, indicating that he should have ‘prepped’ the victim to ensure a certain reportage on television.
“I think no other movie in recent times has taken such a deep dive into the workings of media, and what goes on in the industry. Peepli Live to some extent showed the circus that TV channel content had become back then,” said Husain, who is also one of the producers.
Past failed attempts
This year, The Sabarmati Report starring Vikrant Massey and Rashi Khanna shows English and Hindi media butting heads over the 2002 Godhra train burning incident. Massey plays Samar, a small-time journalist at an unscrupulous media house that dismisses his report on the incident. Five years later, he starts piecing it together with the help of another journalist Amrita (Raashii Khanna).
Directed by Dheeraj Sarna, the movie has been criticised for being a propaganda narrative that shows English news channels as ‘anti-Hindu’.
Anusha Rizvi’s debut feature Peepli Live (2010) was a satirical take on the ‘circus’ that TV channels become in the guise of journalism, even when it involves death by suicide of an impoverished farmer. A year later, No One Killed Jessica looked at the infamous Jessica Lall murder, and the legal battle of Lall’s sister.
It was, however, criticised for the way it depicted the character of Meera Gaity (Rani Mukerji) who follows the case for an investigative report.
“The character is written superficially and Rani’s portrayal of her is equally banal. It’s all about externals. She argues a lot and proudly labels herself a bitch but her hair stays perfectly in place and in the end, she even gets to do a super-hero-like slow motion walk,” wrote film critic Anupama Chopra in her review of the movie for NDTV.
In Vinay Waikul’s The Broken News, anchors Dipankar Sanyal (Jaideep Ahlawat) and Radha Bhargava (Shriya Pilgaonkar) battle it out to deliver unbiased news, in a good vs evil scenario, that is pieced like a whodunit.
What makes The Sadist stand out is that it looks inward, instead of pointing fingers at the ‘system’.
“That is probably why Aman’s character is grey. He is just one of the many who steer the narrative, and the catch is, he does it in refined language, and in a way that makes him believable. He is not screaming to make his point, but when he asks the question, audiences believe him,” said Husain.