Joram Review - Actor Manoj Bajpayee Finds His Destination In This Wandering Plot

Devashish Makhija and Manoj Bajpayee team up for the third time for the Maoist runway thriller Joram. I am not a huge fan of Makhija-Bajpayee's previous outings, but the vision and their individual efforts have been impressive. Also, there is a difference between a theatrical film and an OTT movie that only the director and viewers can understand with their own perception. Joram is still more like an artistic and film festival type of film, which people usually like to see on the OTT in the last 4-5 years. However, there are shortcomings in that as well. The film struggles to find its motive, as the script sounds clueless. On a good note, Manoj Bajpayee's honest performance and a few more good performances from the other cast members make it watchable.A backward-class labourer named Daaru/Bala (Manoj Bajpayee) and his wife, Vaano (Tannishtha Chatterjee), migrate from Jharkhand to Mumbai after selling their land. The couple works as labourers at a construction site, and there they meet MLA Phulo Karma (Smita Tambe), who also belongs to Jharkhand. One night, Bala returns to his house and finds his wife murdered, and the next moment he is attacked by an unknown person. Bala kills the man in self-defence, but the other man captures the video, and Phulo leaks it to trap Bala in a murder case. Bala is on the run, and the cops are after him. He goes to his native place and is followed by one of the cops from the Mumbai Police, Ratnakar (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub). Several facts and revenge theories are revealed from the past, which have a connection to Maoism and some political pressure. Bala, Ratnakar, and Phulo are the ones who are dealing with it.Since the script was written by Devashish only, let's blame him first of all. The plot has no logic as far as the base is concerned. A woman is murdered, and there is no postmortem or police investigation into it. Cops can't be so dumb not to understand that it's a set-up where someone is shooting a video while Bala is fighting the attacker. Moreover, it's more foolish to see it going viral in the new headlines, and yet police suspect no one except Bala. Who shot the video? Did anybody care about that? The video was proof that somebody else was also present on the scene, yet we hear not a single word about that in the entire film. Bala's escape is cut short and is so incomplete. He is hanging on the running train with a 3-month-old child, as if he is Superman! The next moment, he disappears. How did he get off the train? Did he jump or what? We don't know because the filmmaker did not bother to complete the scene. The same happens with the ending scene when Bala jumps down from the high, again with a child on his chest. Seriously? Phulo's ending somehow does justice to the narrative, and then there is a bleak finale to Bala's future. That worked fine as far as the artistic value of the cinematic experience is concerned.Talking about performances, Manoj Bajpayee has done it again in Makhija's directorial. Don't forget, he won the National Award for his performance in Bhosle. We all know what a great actor Manoj is, and he just shows that again. This time the genre and tone differ, that's all. He doesn't have many dialogues, nor does he have any transformations or expressive scenes, yet he leaves an impact as a simple but dark portrayal of Bala/Dasru. I have been following Smita Tambe's journey since Jogwa and 72 Mail days, so I know her calibre and how good she can be in performance-driven roles. With Joram, she shows her class work and what she is capable of. Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub gives another fine performance as a cop. These three actors have delivered enough to make Joram's entry to your watchlist, while the other cast members have done more than okay in the supporting roles.Piyush Puty handled the camera work for Joram, and I think he should get an award or two for it. What brilliant and creative cinematography it was! The camera shakes when the characters are running/chasing, giving you the real feel of what you feel when you run in such a way in your real life. That's how the visuals look in real life. That train's toilet scene is shot so well. He had to make it very close because the character has locked the door from inside, and keeping the frame wide would have taken away the realistic value of the scene. The background score is also very good, especially in the last 2-3 scenes when Bala is running and feeling tired. That exhaustion can be felt through the background score here. The production value is fine, the editing keeps it engaging, and the dialogues are strictly okay. Devashish Makhija, as a director, tries to give full justice to the story, but it's the story that fails to match the level of expectations. It felt like the entire team was giving their best when the script was wandering clueless in the jungles. The entire theory of Maoism and political pressure did not make any sense, even if you look at it as a revenge drama. I wish they had worked on the script, and this would have been a solid attempt at low-budget artistic cinema. As a whole, it has some highs and lows, but it's up to you where you focus more.