Dinesh Kamath's column on movie 'Inkaar' that was published in Newsband

Inkaar is an upcoming Hindi language romance crime film. It is directed by Sudhir Mishra and produced by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures. The film is being produced under the Tipping Point Films banner, starring Arjun Rampal and Chitrangada Singh in the lead roles. The film deals with sexual harassment in corporate set-up and will release on 18 January 2013.

The film has Arjun Rampal as Rahul Verma, Chitrangada Singh as Maya Laura, Vipin Sharma as Gupta, Gaurav Dwivedi as Atul, Asheesh Kapur as Praful, Akanksha Nehra as Payal, Kaizaad Kotwal as KK, Sandeep Sanchdev, Deepti Naval, Shivani Tanksale, Mohan Kapoor, Rehana Sultan.

The film has an interesting story. At one of India’s leading ad agencies, the battle for the top job between Rahul (Arjun Rampal), a venerated advertising CEO, and Maya (Chitrangada Singh) his ambitious protégé takes a dramatic turn when she files a sexual harassment complaint against him. Now it’s the job of the committee set up by the agency to hear both sides of the story and work through the layers of lies and accusations to find out who’s really telling the truth and who’s lying. The stakes are high because only of one them (Rahul or Maya) will walk away with their reputation intact and get the top job. Will the committee really be able to uncover the truth? How will the agency deal with the dilemma of choosing between its two most talented people?

To put the story in a different way, Inkaar is a story about sexual relationships in an office environment. A sense of sexual tension which might develop in today's modern cut-throat workplaces.

We have a man, a creative genius, a successful professional, who mentored this one woman. He believed in her, taught her all he knew, supported her and helped her find an identity of her own.

As a team they did brilliantly. He is already an established name, and she, an upcoming talent. It was all going well, they started dating, and shared a wonderful, fast-paced life in one of India's brightest shining advertising agencies.

The story revolves around their equation; friendship and intimacy which all breed while they share office space.

What you learn from the movie is you never know when a casual meeting will turn into something important or beautiful or musical.

The film has songs like Darmiyan sung by Swanand Kirkire, Maula Tu Malik Hai by Shantanu Moitra and Swanand Kirkire, Zindagi Ka Karobar by K. Mohan, Kuch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai by Suraj Jagan and Inkaar (Theme) by Monali Thakur.

Music of the film is composed by Shantanu Moitra. Musicperk rated the album 6.5/10 quoting "Needs time to grow! Might be better with visuals". Joginder Tuteja of Bollywood Hungama gave negative reviews to the album and rated it 0 out of 10, quoting "Inkaar turns out to be an out and out situational outing that doesn't really throw any chartbuster numbers. Even from being attached to the film from situational perspective, the end results are just about fine and one doesn't really foresee a long lasting feel to them."

Sudhir Mishra as a director has been more or less been designated as the one who mixes commercial ingredients in offbeat cinema effortlessly. From Dharavi to Yeh Saali Zindagi, most of his movies have managed this mix well. In Inkaar he portrays romance with a theme of sex with Arjun Rampal and Chitrangada Singh. Music in his movies is theme based and blends perfectly in the screenplay, something which is expected out of Inkaar as well. Hence, an experimental and offbeat streak is represented by lyricist Swanand Kirkire and composer Shantanu Moitra.

Thus the daring filmmaker goes overboard with an expletive in his upcoming film on sexual harassment at workplace. Looks like Sudhir Mishra has done it again! The filmmaker, who is known to call a spade a spade, has taken a similar direct approach towards the subject of sexual harassment in his film Inkaar. Known to depict the harsh realities of life, Sudhir has apparently gone quite real and overboard maybe, as he has used the sex word 262 times in the movie.

But what is most ironic is that even though people are swearing each other’s sexes off in the movie, there are apparently no steamy scenes in the film or at least, not as many as the subject of the movie might demand. It seems that since the movie is more about the battle of sexes at the workplace than just plain exploitation, it may have made the filmmaker take a more literal yet sensible approach. 

Do watch the film Inkaar when it gets released on 18 January 2013.