Happi: The story of survival and pursuit of happiness

 

Happi is a Hindi Language feature film directed by Bhavna Talwar made in Black and White is a pure slice of life. After being stuck so long, the film finally released on the OTT platform in December 2019, and a film like happi comes once in a blue moon. Earlier this film was named “Awasthi” but later on renamed as “Happi”. The film is about a 50-year old man who used to sing and make people laugh in Bombay Café. This film can be truly understood by people who discern the essence of Bombay over Mumbai, handwritten letters over e-mails, old classic over the noisy remixes, and black & white over the color. The film portrays a character named Happi (Pankaj Kapoor), who reminds us of the value of a smile. Happi lived alone in a Bombay chawl and doesn’t have much expectation from life. He goes to his duties at the Bombay cafe like clockwork, with no inquisitiveness or thoughts, replicate his same act over and over again. Soon the old owner of the cafe is swap by his modern, innovative and ambitious Mumbaikar son (Nakul Vaid), and when his son decides to turn the cafe into a Mumbai club, which means to stop Happi's clock. The world was changing so rapidly but it seems happi life stuck in one point, but he was happy with that, his colleagues in the café used to rag him, oppressed him and scorn him all the time. Hrishita Bhatt, in the role of new singer utterly swap happi, but he firmly stands there and acquire a short slot for him where he tried hard to survive in this changing world. More than a portrait of a rapidly transforming metropolitan environment Happi shows us how cruel human beings can be to someone who is not uncorrupted enough to understand when he is being mocked. The sequence where the club gets Happi drunk and watches him perform a stupid dance is tear-jerking. Pankaj’s Happi reminds us Joaquin Phoenix’s film Joker where he felt disregarded and mistreated by the society and left to be destroyed by his unhappiness. The major twist comes in his life when a stray dog which he named Chotu who follows him and become his companion in a city that grows rapidly hardhearted. The director Bhavna Talwar smears an unforgettable portrait of the city talk about urban isolation, anger, and the unkind activities of society towards the gentle soul. Despite the poor jokes, badly matched steps, and noisily sung old-time numbers, he only knows that what he’s going through. When one-day Chotu was missing he becomes restless and did his best to find him, as it seems Chotu was the only hope for whom he wants to survive but it wasn’t easy for him to cope up with all the distress, so he left the insensitive and pitiless world. In Happi, it has been said that Pankaj's character has been inspired by Charlie Chaplin, and it’s a tribute to him, but director Bhavna says the only common thing between the two is, the style of storytelling and there is no comparison to Charlie Chaplin. A happi is an unchanging man in a rapidly changing world. It's to highlight with this metaphor perhaps that the movie is presented in black-and-white. Pankaj Kapoor power pact acting makes it a worth watch, and iIlaiyaraaja as a music composer was a good choice. This film is a showcasing of how as a society a lot of value has been put on accomplishment, shrewdness, being calculative that we are losing virtue and the basic ability to be human. This film is at once a Drama, humor, and catastrophe, but at the same time will make you think and rethink twice and thrice of the times, that is what society we are living in.