Varun Grover’s debut feature as director, All India Rank, unfolds in the 1990s, a time of giddy liberalisation and pop trivia. Witty references abound; for instance, what links HC Verma — a writer of lucid and luggable Physics textbooks — with Mansoor Khan, the director of the unwieldy 80s romance Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak? Answer: both men went to an IIT (Indian Institute of Technology). It is an amusing tidbit, made funnier by the dubious lesson extrapolated from it: that children who go into IITs stand to excel in any field, be it book-writing or Bollywood.
In a class of hopefuls, Vivek (Bodhisattva Sharma) hears this spiel. Yet we know not for certain if he buys into it. At the start of the film, he’s bundled off from Lucknow to Kota to prepare for his IIT entrance exams. He’s a shy, gawky 17-year-old, with his walkman and thermos. “I have no dream,” he says, an innocuous teenager’s confession, unthinkable — then as now — in aspirational middle India. We check in with his parents, pinching every penny so their son can study in peace. His father, a low-ranking government employee, enumerates the merits of a top-tier engineering degree; job, respect, ease of life. And there’s a fourth benefit he does not immediately verbalise: social standing.
From the beginning, Vivek strikes us as sincere but adrift, as kids of his age ought to be. He warms to two of his hostel mates, mouthy repeaters played by Ayush Pandey and Neeraj Singh, and takes a shine to smart, focused Sarika (Samta Sudiksha). In a scene, the quartet cycles down to a riverfront to shoot the breeze. Grover builds the scene around natural sounds and the gentle existential queries of this group. It is a beautiful moment in the film, a geeky and unglamorous mirroring of the Chapora Fort sequence in Dil Chahta Hai.
All India Rank (Hindi)
Grover, an IIT (BHU) graduate, wrote this script around a decade ago; he’s worked hitherto as a lyricist, standup comedian and writer-for-hire. He’s building from personal material in All India Rank, though the film also betrays his yen for historical research (there is an amusing reference to how the first IIT campus was an erstwhile British jail). Coaching institutes and academic pressure have been well-plumbed in the Hindi cinema of the past decade, especially in granular streaming shows like Kota Factory and Laakhon Mein Ek. SoAll India Rank suffers from some fatigue by familiarity. Several of the ideas and insights seem to echo on from past offerings. Even little things — such as the winsome casting decision of having 12th Fail’s Geeta Aggarwal Sharma play Vivek’s mother — go against the film.
In Alexander Payne’s recent The Holdovers, another film about a directionless youth in a prep school, 70s America is brought to resplendent, nostalgic life. Grover and production designer Prachi Deshpande attempt the same with 90s India. The film is set in 1997, in the 50th year of Independence. The period detailing is lovely, from avuncular Ajay Jadeja posters on the walls to WWE-inspired nom de guerres. Apart from an enthusiastic ‘hard-work’ montage that looks and sounds gratingly modern, the film is marked by a sleepy, indolent pacing. By today’s regimented standards, the Kota of 1997 seems like a slower, gentler place, embodied in the soft-toned performance of Sheeba Chaddha as coaching institute founder Bundela Madam.
It might take a couple more films for Grover to come into his own as a visual stylist; the mixed-media sections, blending live-action and animated overlays, are such a rote idea. There are poetic flourishes in the writing (“titliyon ke jhund me patanga”, a moth in a gang of butterflies) that could have been resisted. While it may have helped with the censors, I was disappointed with ‘fuck IIT’ being changed to ‘chuck IIT’ in the theatrical version of All India Rank. It seems to diminish the film’s message by half. These kids may sputter and croak in the pursuit of excellence, but dare they swear!
All India Rank is currently playing in theatres
