‘Jazz City’ Series Review: An Overindulgent Ode To History and Patriotism

We’re back to 1971. Again. Contemporary Indian cinema will have you believe that South Asian history — nay, human civilisation itself — begins and ends with 1971. Dinosaurs probably went extinct just before that. Jokes aside, so much of historical storytelling is concentrated into that one decade that the fatigue is real. Ironically, mainstream Bollywood at the time reacted to all the national turmoil with Angry Young Men and disillusioned anti-establishment heroes. But today's stories are more focused on painting that very country as a vessel of patriotism, political courage and cultural superiority. Naturally, this happens at the expense of two familiar neighbours. To its credit, Jazz City finds a new and expensive way to flaunt India’s role in the Bangladesh Liberation War.

The fight for Bengali identity and language is at the forefront of the 10-episode series, whose protagonist is a suave nightclub owner in 1970s Calcutta. The place is the hottest property on Park Street; important and wealthy folks dine and deal here, a sultry White singer serenades the air, the employees hide espionage secrets, snippets of surrogate opinion waft across the smoky restaurant, and armchair experts debate the ruthlessness of West Pakistan’s Jinnah and the vision of East Pakistan’s Mujib. It’s like watching a 1970s version of Twitter with fine food and booze (or “a fundraiser with three-course meals and a side of moral high ground”). This young owner, Jimmy Roy (Arifin Shuvoo), catches the eye of an Indian intelligence officer (Santanu Ghatak) because he’s a charming hustler who can get things done that apparently even the agency cannot. It’s a flimsy narrative excuse to co-opt the Uttam Kumar-coded Jimmy into a seminal moment; he goes from apolitical capitalist to reluctant revolutionary over the course of a story that keeps admiring itself in the mirror (“this is the story of a nobody who found the courage to be a somebody”) before stumbling on different ramps. It’s like watching a maze decorated with sound and plot and music and elaborate diversions and pseudo-intellectual garnish only to reach the same primal conclusion: India hero, Bangladesh damsel in distress, Pakistan villain.

The problem with Jazz City — and there are several — is that it uses its unusual protagonist to reframe the birth of Bangladesh as an aesthetic. Jimmy Roy and the world of his jazz club largely feel like a license to infuse style into what is essentially just another black-or-white historical drama. It’s part Casablanca, part Ocean’s 11, part Blood Diamond, part Jubilee (co-created by director Jazz City director Soumik Sen), part Berlin (made by Atul Sabharwal, the co-writer of Jubilee), part just a cosmetic device to slather the storyline with musicality, production value and texture (with a capital T). There’s an effort to bake the nightclub more organically into genocides, epidemics, tunnel escapes, Operation Searchlight, storms and shootouts, but the transformation of Jimmy is unconvincing, and his awakening becomes a footnote within the ambitious range of the narrative. The connective tissue is loose at best, even though the characters in his club — a cunning manager in love with the singer; a couple of pensive chefs — arrive with their own trauma and disruptive motives.

There’s always a sense that the series is looking for ways to be indulgent and cinephilic rather than curious. A climax in a movie theatre takes the cake in terms of just how far it’ll go to conceal its hollow core. This core is nothing we haven’t seen before: an evil Pakistani General on a killing rampage while he searches for three Bangla student activists, shots of Yahya Khan saying ominous things, instances of bloodthirsty soldiers asking victims “are you Muslim or are you Bengali?”, shots of West Pakistan leaders worrying about the nation-building speeches of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Indira Gandhi speaking like she’s imitating an Indira Gandhi lookalike, and many (forgettable) Bangla songs sung to amplify the protest of the linguistic majority. There are eccentric additions, especially an English priest who speaks like a failed Godfather fan and a senior Brit-Pakistani journalist with an uncanny resemblance to Ayaz Memon. The tensions and love story between Jimmy and Meera (Sauraseni Maitra) — an ex-girlfriend who bleeds for the jobless refugees pouring into Calcutta — unfold only because they must. It’s more of a bucket-list entry in terms of how many tropes a lavish period drama can include.

Given the scale of the series, the staging is strangely tacky. The VFX-aided scenes of characters at screensaver-coded airports and drives in retro cars resemble the technical limitations of movies from the era; the outdoor sequences don’t need a lot of dressing because the antiquity of Calcutta becomes a readymade ruse. As a Sony LIV show, it’s not even close to the two physically focused seasons of Freedom at Midnight or Rocket Boys. The one thing that works is the lead performance of Bangladeshi star Arifin Shuvoo. Despite his random switches to part-time espionage, you can tell that the character is heavily influenced by big-screen spies and Bollywood idols, from the way he lights his cigarette to the drawl he speaks in. It’s a very watchable turn in a series that doesn’t quite know what to do with Jimmy Roy as a concept. The other thing that works are the stakes; most characters are oblivious to the magnitude of violence and oppression because propaganda is the flavour of the hour. Free speech is stifled and nobody knows the extent of the conflict. The guests at that club believe the information they’re fed, so the urgency of someone like Jimmy exposing the ‘truth’ registers. I just wish it didn’t take almost 10 hours of scrambled storytelling to arrive at the same old feature-length resolution. Not to mention the sort of hybrid jazz tunes that Damien Chazelle would not be pleased with.