Here is one director who needs to be written and talked about more for his brutally honest, hard-hitting films over the past few years. Hansal Mehta's last two ventures, Shahid (2013) and Citylights (2014) surely deserved more coverage and discussion in the media than the usual pre-release reportage in the news channels. Of course, it helped that Shahid (based on the life of lawyer and human rights activist Shahid Azmi, who was assassinated in 2010 in Mumbai) received the national awards for the best actor (Raj Kummar Rao) and director.
Hansal Mehta has moved a long way from the days when he was directing a TV cookery show titled Khana Khazana in the 1990s and made quite a few forgettable duds in mainstream Bollywood.
His latest film, Aligarh, is garnering accolades from critics and standing ovations from audiences in film festivals. The film relates the true life story of Dr Shrinivas Ramachandra Shiras, a professor of Marathi at the Aligarh Muslim University, who was suspended from his job for his sexual orientation. After successfully appealing his suspension, he died in suspicious circumstances.
In his review in firstpost.com, journalist and LGBT rights activist Ashok Row Kavi writes:
"....the film is a masterpiece of cinematic skills bundled deftly by Mehta and writer Apurva Asrani with several LGBT staffers in the unit.
....Amidst the sometimes surreal sets, Manoj Bajpayee stands out as Professor Siras (at Aligarh Muslim University). Looking crushed and broken as the closet homosexual, a word he does not even understand, he plays the role to perfection...
...What's chilling about the film is that what happened to the protagonist could happen anywhere in India – in posh Malabar Hill, in the dreary landscape of Bareilly or even in the picturesque hills of the North-East. What Mehta and writer Apurva Asrani have done is pluck out a commonplace professor in a commonplace university and weave a true life story into a tapestry of terrifying, compelling drama..."
The film has got effusive praise from Rediff.com's critic Aseem Chhabra who writes :
"Aligarh is a milestone in the history of Indian cinema that should start the much needed conversation about how India treats gays and lesbians...
...What Mehta and his scriptwriter Apurva Asrani (the first script by the award-winning film editor) want us to know is that Siras' sexuality is his personal affair. What happens to him in the the film (and what was done to the good professor by the homophobic AMU administration) is completely wrong, a violation of his privacy, an invasion of his personal space and the denial of his fundamental rights."
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