Heeramandi review: Opulent, aesthetic, melodramatic, stretched, stereotypical - Bhansali's courtesans dazzle yet annoy

Creator: Sanjay Leela Bhansali

Cast: Manisha Koirala, Sonakshi Sinha, Aditi Rao Hydari, Sharmin Sehgal, Sanjeeda Sheikh, Richa Chadha, Shekhar Suman, Adhyayan Suman, Taha Shah Badussha

Where to watch: Netflix

Rating: 2.5 stars

Heeramandi, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s first offering on streaming, is like a drug. It hits you hard and pulls you in but whether the ‘trip’ you go on is good or bad is quite subjective. It is entertaining, no doubt, but in such an over-the-top way that belongs to 70s’ cinema more than it does to 2023’s web series. The sets are grand, the music melodious, and the actors adorned in dazzling jewels, like they are in any Bhasali production. But beneath it all, the narrative is hollow, decadent, and misogynistic in a way where it derives perverse pleasure of suffering.

Heeramandi tells a fictional tale of the tawaifs (courtesans) of Heeramandi, the famous pleasure district of Lahore, where Mallikajaan (Manisha Koirala) reigns supreme. Her pat catches up to her as her niece Fareedan (Sonkashi Sinha) returns to lay claim to the ‘throne’ of Heeramandi. Elsewhere, Mallika’s daughter Alam (Sharmin Sehgal) finds love with a Nawab’s son and chaos ensues in this Game of Thrones-meets-Umrao Jaan saga.

Bhansali has envisioned Heeramandi as a struggle for power and love, interspersing it with the actual freedom struggle of India. The show is set in the 1940s, at the height of the Quit India movement. The courtesans are fighting for their freedom, both from societal oppressions and the British Raj. The parallels of freedom are for all to see, and in typical Bhansali fashion, delivered in prose and poetry both.

Sonakshi Sinha delivers a fine performance in Heeramandi

Where Heeramandi lost me was in its exuberance. The show is signature Bhansali, but leaning more towards Ram Leela than Devdas, when it comes to subtlety. The latter had some finesse about it, with more nazaqat (tenderness), while the latter was brash ad over-the-top. Heeramandi, strangely, is tender yet over-the-top with the usual cliches and stereotypes about Muslims galore.

The aesthetics carry the show. The sets are grand and immersive, and the visuals, frames, and colours are other-worldly. Bhansali is a master of world-building and he brings his best here. He takes you inside this strange new world and makes you familiar with it in no time. The contrast of lighting between the dim kothas of the tawaifs and the brightly-lit havelis of the nawabs emphasise the difference in the social stature.

But the narrative takes away the sheen from the presentation. Heeramandi reduces its characters to caricatures. Everyone is trying way too hard to be noticed and some are not trying enough (here’s looking at you Sharmin). The dialoguebaazi gets too repetitive, too soon. The love track between Tajdar and Alam is supposed to be the rooh (soul) of Heeramandi but lacks any semblance of a chemistry. The freedom struggle narrative looks shoehorned and lacks the thrill it needed. The show truly comes alive when the women – particularly Manisha Koirala and Sonakshi Sinha – are scheming against one another. Their power struggle and virtual game of chess are the only thing that make Heeramandi watchable.

The two actresses deliver fine performances too. Manisha, particularly, aces the complex role of Mallikajaan even when the script hardly does her character justice. Sonakshi, too, does well when her character is being malicious. But the moment Fareedan becomes ‘nice’, the actress looks like a fish out of water. For me, the best thing in Heeramandi was Richa Chadha, who plays the anti-Devdas, a courtesan drinking herself to death because of a nawab. The actress brings in just the right amount of tragedy and melancholy to the screen.

Aditi Rao Hydari hams in places I did not know there was any possibility of hamming, while the less I say about Sharmin Sehgal's poker face delivery the better it is. Sanjeeda Sheikh manages to bring some delight in her semi-evil ways but in the end, her character remains one-dimensional. Of the men, Taha Shah Badussha has the most screen time and he justifies his presence for the most part. Among the others, Fardeen Khan, Adhyayan Suman, and Shekhar Suman had little to do apart from showing off their Urdu diction, which is a shame because usually, long-form content relies on character development for even the support cast.

Heeramandi marks Fardeen Khan's (pictured here with Aditi Rao Hydari) return to screen after 14 years

For a man who presents so many female characters so beautifully, Bhansali time and again snatches their agency so brutally that one can’t but feel sorry for his women. In this story too, the director presents his tawaifs’ sufferings in a rather perverse manner, where their pain, tears, and heartbreaks are embellished for entertainment. Despite being told from a woman’s point of view, Heeramandi lacks the female gaze and sensitivity it needed. Case in point – one scene of a character heading into a gangrape as some brave form of sacrifice. If that is Bhansali’s idea of giving women their agency, it is a deeply flawed one.

But despite this, Heeramandi remains entertaining for the most part. Partly because it is an interesting story, even if one badly told. It gets cringey, it gets loud, but it is also engaging (before subtlety goes out the window in that bizarre final sequence set to a poor man’s version of Hum Dekhenge). And that’s what Heeramandi ends up becoming – a poor man’s version of Pakeezah + Bazaar, with several problematic themes being hidden by its glitzy outer shell.