Based on Aravind Adiga’s novel of the same name, Ben Rekhi’s Last Man In Tower is defined by its curious relationship with storytelling. It starts out like a vintage Bombay movie with ‘characters’ and designs of a scrappy fairytale about the old guard holding down the brick fort in the face of rampant gentrification. There’s a sense of community and colour. It’s 2010, the setting is a crumbling colony called Vishram (“Rest”) in Mumbai’s suburb of Vakola, and the residents are diverse: the touchy Punjabi lady with a neurodivergent son, the generous old Catholic couple, the fiery single mom accused of ‘communism,’ the mild-mannered building secretary, the lone Muslim family, the street-smart hustler, and the single working girl who becomes the subject of gossip for having a sex life. Retired teacher Yogesh Mishra (Manoj Bajpayee) is the fair and level-headed patriarch of this unofficial family; he tutors the kids and schools the adults.
When ruthless builder Dharmen Shah (Boman Irani) drives a wedge between the good folks of Vishram with promises of a luxurious tower and a redeveloped future, you expect the film to behave like a film. There are patterns of an underdog story in the way the desperate residents try to manipulate the hesitant ones, in the way sides are switched, or in the way Yogesh draws up an elaborate plan of resistance. There are shades of famous middle-class dramedies like Khosla Ka Ghosla (featuring Irani’s presence as the predatory builder), and Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year in Dharmen’s arrogance hitting a wall in Yogesh’s spirit. You expect a strong pro-bono lawyer to change the game; you expect the references to a scrappy journalist to result in the feel-good plot twist; you even expect the slut-shamed young tenant to become the trump card of the team (social-media manager and all). That's how it usually goes. The stage is ripe for a come-from-behind victory of Vishram, like the isolated village of Asterix and his Gauls fending off the Romans for years with the power of humanity (and magic potion) alone.
But Last Man in Tower, as the title suggests, is not that David-versus-Goliath movie. It's an unforgiving portrait of reality posing as fiction. Given the metropolitan’s endless real-estate epidemic, the premise is depressingly topical. The ‘greed’ of the residents disguised as hope — or masquerading as financial security for their children — is easy to judge, but they cannot be faulted. They are sold the agency to dream, a way out from the hamster wheel of settling. The film refuses to morph into one of those sweet escapist comedies, as if to prove that there's no space for fantasy left because it cannot afford the Mumbai rents either.
The direction the film takes is relentless. The life of Yogesh, who might have been the winning protagonist of most mainstream narratives, unravels fast. The rifts caused among the society members feel permanent. The conflicts feel etched in stone; the bonds fray, and Yogesh’s rage isn't the kind that fades. The resentments festering in his own son (Sukant Goel), who's a successful corporate slave himself, do not strive to be resolved. At some point, there's no coming back, every spark is snuffed out, and it's like watching yet another primal family fall out over an ugly property dispute.
A decade ago, Manoj Bajpayee altered the language of modern victimhood as Professor Siras in Hansal Mehta’s Aligarh, a respected professor who battles societal stigma but slowly withers away after being caught in a homosexual encounter; an empathetic reporter warms up to him, but the damage is done. Siras’ spiritual successor is Yogesh Mishra, a respected teacher who battles societal stigma as the last man standing between the builder and the redevelopment of a middle-class colony. A reporter is mentioned, but he never comes. The widower hangs on stubbornly, all alone, even as his neighbours and relatives lose their patience with him. Bajpayee infuses the lone-warrior tragedy of the professor into “Master-ji” Mishra, a man cornered by his morality and his disillusionment with a city where (de)construction wears the illusion of evolution; with a landscape that makes it hard to tell demolition from progress; with a place that’s perpetually shedding its past to rebuild a mythical future.
The familiarity of Bajpayee’s performance speaks to the anonymity of dissenters like him — ordinary people who are persecuted for standing firm amidst the conformities of everyday living. We’ve seen him in our fathers and grandfathers and uncles: seniors who are labelled ‘difficult’ and ‘nuisance’ because they are allergic to change and suspicious of newness. But I like that Yogesh is a mix of such antiheroism and frustrating heroism. He is not glorified by virtue of being an obstacle in the path of cold progress. At some level, even he is unsure of what is driving him: Is it because, as his ‘enemy’ surmises, he’s found a belated purpose and medium for courage after failing to be strong when it mattered? Is it because principles and legal disputes are the only way for him to impose his identity — masculinity, even — in a world that’s wired to leave him behind? Or is it just because he’s just another bull-headed chap who demonises modernity and romanticises history?
He chooses to be stuck in the past, as a misplaced symbol of strength. His house is full of artefacts: a typewriter, newspapers, a sewing machine, a landline, a phone-book, memories of his marriage and his son’s childhood. He advises his grandson and other children to read books and play outside, not watch screens. His tireless quest reframes love as the grammar of preservation, and living as an act of remembering. He is not wrong, but he isn’t right either; he continues, to some degree, because he is doing it for himself more than anyone else. The intimidation employed to suppress those like Yogesh canonises them, turning them into martyrs who are sacrificed at the altar of heritage and sentimentality. The significance of their stance becomes larger than the stance itself.
The entire cast is solid (especially Sukant Goel as the pragmatic son), but the scene-stealer is Divya Dutta as Mrs. Puri, the sharp-tongued neighbour who almost yanks the film into her space as the protagonist of her own reduced life. Supporting characters like her are rarely staged beyond cosmetic value (or as the nosy opponents), but Dutta gives Mrs. Puri the embattled soul of someone who is desperate to dream beyond her status as a caregiver. A poignant moment shows her manipulating a resident and appealing to her hardship as a single mother, only to get genuinely emotional while connecting with the lady she never liked; the ‘mission’ turns her into an organic ally of sorts. The essence is that she’s exhausted, and any parachute sounds like a golden one; her increasing hostility towards Yogesh is a psychological thriller of its own. It allows the film to get darker and more grounded without any tonal deceptions.
A remarkable aspect of Sooni Taraporevala’s adapted screenplay is the political subtext of this modest housing society. The builder arriving to displace the peace is akin to a minister arriving with lofty promises of development and Shanghai-coded growth by turning one faction of people against the other in a dysfunctional democracy. Suddenly there are majorities and minorities. The colony is decaying with water shortages and infrastructural issues, and they don’t have the funds to change it. But the carrot put in front of the residents shows how capitalism is the only religion that truly divides; communalism is merely the outlet. The rest of them forget their differences, and just like that, an erstwhile leader is marginalised for putting relationships over money. It doesn’t matter what his surname is, or that he was an educator, or that he encourages everyone to look out for each other. All he did was interrogate the nature of aspiration in a nation torn between longing and belonging. All he does is exist as a time, not a place: a flesh-and-blood person, not an ivory tower.