A Styzyga is a terrifying Slavic mythological demon with two hearts and two souls intertwined in the same body. While I would never assume that Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra are the after remains of a malevolent demon of Polish origin, their eerily similar career trajectories suggests otherwise.
Both debuted in Ishaqzaade, a 2012 film about star-crossed lovers that transcended the scores of other likeminded films and thus became a sleeper hit on account of the two’s white hot chemistry. Their careers also ended preemptively in the same year, 2014, with Kapoor’s brilliant Coen Bros-esque Finding Fanny and Chopra’s criminally overlooked dark take on the masala genre, Hasee Toh Phasee, being their definitive swan songs.
Despite their incontestable thespian skills (yes, Arjun too), Kapoor and Chopra’s careers both flailed in the last six years – Kapoor’s culminating with the especially schlocky Panipat and Chopra with Jabariya Jodi.
As is often the case, sometimes all it takes to pull an actor’s career from oblivion is a great director. In Kapoor and Chopra’s case, it’s Dibanker Banerjee who must have recognized the two work best in tandem and when placed in maelstroms that coerce a man and woman to find solace in each other’s arms – as was the case in Ishaqzaade.
“Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra flourish once again in despondent milieus.”
So what does Banerjee do? He stations the two in one of his signature nihilistic milieus that, not coincidentally, is not too far removed from the one in Ishaqzaade. But as opposed to the violent religious sectarianism Kapoor and Chopra had to prevail over in Ishaqzaade, in Sandeep Aurr Pinky Farrar it’s the violent aftermath of crony capitalism.
Chopra is Sandeep Walia, a calculated banker, and Kapoor is Satyendra “Pinky” Dahiya, a detective on sabbatical, who inadvertently becomes her hired gun when it’s found that she has a bounty on her head. A cat and mouse chase ensues that unfurls into something more complicated and sinister.
This is Banerjee’s at his most exciting, his most thought-provoking since LSD (Love, Sex Aurr Dhoka). His shorts in the anthology films, Lust Stories and Ghost Stories, as beautiful as they were, can’t contain his creativity and labyrinthine thoughts on humanity. He clearly needs a bigger canvas to paint on so that when we’re not transfixed by Chopra and Kapoor’s presence, we are made to look at the people and breathing landscapes trapped in his world.
