Reema Kagti’s Superboys of Malegaon celebrates the cottage film industry that emerged out of the textile town in Maharashtra in the 2000s. Mollywood – Malegaon’s Bollywood – lasted long enough to be widely documented in the media, in addition to inspiring a few documentaries, notably Faiza Ahmed Khan’s Supermen of Malegaon (2008).
Mollywood was identified mostly with Nasir Shaikh, the self-taught maverick who directed such no-budget parodies of Hindi classics as Malegaon Ke Sholay and Malegaon Ka Mughal-e-Azam. Khan’s documentary captured the making of Shaikh’s Malegaon Ka Superman. Reema Kagti’s Hindi fiction feature, written by Varun Grover, keeps Nasir Shaikh at the front and centre of a story about creating cinema out of almost nothing.
In Malegaon in the late 1990s, Nasir (Adarsh Gourav) runs a video parlour that’s doing badly. A movie buff whose tastes extend to the silent-cinema icon Buster Keaton, Nasir figures out that filmmaking isn’t difficult at all. All you need is a saleable idea, a willing team and truckloads of chutzpah.
No dolly to create travelling shots? Use a bicycle or bullock cart instead. No trained actors? Recruit your friends. Nasir’s audacity wins over his equally movie-addicted pals, including Farogh (Vineet Singh), Irfan (Saqib Ayub), Akram (Anuj Duhan) and Shafique (Shashank Arora).
The spoof Malegaon Ke Sholay is a hit. Nasir gets married, to the supportive Shabeena (Muskkan Jaferi). Where is the conflict, the authors of scriptwriting manuals might ask. Superboys of Malegaon fulfils this condition by setting Nasir’s rise against the disquiet of his collaborators, especially Farogh and Akram.
The 131-minute film, which is out in cinemas, is seething with good-natured characters who immediately leave a mark. Adarsh Gourav’s terrific Nasir – boyish but ambitious too, romantic as well as sharp – is complemented by fine turns from the supporting cast, especially Vineet Singh’s soulful Farogh.
Manjiri Pupala has a crackerjack role as Trupti, a dancer who supplies glamour to Nasir’s parodies. Trupti wants a separate make-up van and gets it – in the form of a repurposed autorickshaw.
The film ably shows the drama behind the drama, Nasir’s refusal to be defeated, the passion of his fellow travellers. Shafique badly wants to be a hero and gets his wish when he is cast as the spindly hero of Nasir’s Superman of Malegaon.
The hacks used by Nasir to recruit actors and create visual effects with whatever is at hand generate the laughs. The crackpottery of the enterprise survives a storytelling approach that relies heavily on montages to take the plot forward.
Anand Subaya has edited Superboys of Malegaon as a series of collections of small moments. This device ensures momentum, but also leads to a clinical neatness that often doesn’t capture the sheer madness at work.
Superboys of Malegaon is a perfectly sweet tribute to the power of cinema to inspire other kinds of cinema. While the movie does not go anywhere near Malegaon’s communally-riven history, every major character just happens to be Muslim – a staggering achievement by contemporary standards.
But what was it in Malegaon’s water that made Nasir Shaikh and his collaborators dare to dream? Superboys of Malegaon has a generalised small-town quality, rather than a specific flavour – the M in Mollywood is missing. The larger cultural context for Malegaon’s homegrown industry is better explored by Faiza Ahmed Khan’s documentary (which gets a shout-out in the credits).
Originality, the neglect of screenwriters, the question of whether Nasir is fair in his dealings – Superboys of Malegaon projects Bollywood anxieties onto a canvas that is many times smaller than the average low-budget Hindi movie. An opening credit instructs viewers on how to pronounce Malegaon. There’s a repeated motif of a plane flying in the sky, in case the point about aspiration is lost.
Superboys of Malegaon prefers broad brush strokes to a miniaturised portrait of a micro scene. A sprinkling of fairy dust clings to cinematographer Swapnil S Sonwane’s sun-kissed frames and the treatment of Nasir’s wife Shabeena.
Through Farogh, Superboys of Malegaon gives out the hint of a critique of Nasir’s reliance on existing material to mount his own films. It’s an interesting crease in an otherwise smooth tribute, which is quickly abandoned for a literal salute to Nasir’s gumption.
Also read:
‘Superboys of Malegaon’ director Reema Kagti: ‘A film that celebrates the magic of cinema’
How Malegaon’s film superheroes flew low and reached great heights
