You ever wonder while looking at a watchman or a street vendor how things are at home? Not just financially but what how conditions are at home, whether he is staying with his parents or he has any kids? What does he do in his spare time, what sort of respect does he have amongst his colleagues? Prateek Vats’ Eeb Allay Ooo interrogates the inner lives of these persons who are at the lowest rung on the employment ladder.
Anjani (Shardul Bharadwaj) has a peculiar sort of job. He is hired to shoo monkeys away from a few important spots in the city. Anjani himself is only 11th Pass and is newly arrived in Delhi so this sort of job is par for the course. He is shown the ropes by Mahinder (Mahinder Nath), an experienced monkey repeller whose family has been doing this job for generations and Nath is in real life a real monkey repeller. Anjani finds the job hard but the employment situation is perilous as shown in a parallel track with his sister and brother-in-law.
Vats keeps the proceedings low-key. The business with monkey repelling doesn’t turn into a environmental parable, although there are a few hints here and there of the unfairness of the situation for the monkeys. The narrative trots along with a few choice gags interspersed with domestic drama. Some conversations could fit neatly into a Priyadarshan film, while some utilize the monkeys’ reactions. I don’t know whether these performances from the monkeys are a directorial feat or an editorial one (probably it’s a mix of both) but the scenes with them are often funny and the monkeys come across endearingly. My favourite gag though is the brother-in-law’s boss telling him “this is not a game” while they are sitting on a amusement park ride.
Brewing underneath throughout the film are the conflicts of class, about how employers treat their lowly employees. Even a little deviation from the expected pattern is punishable while benefits and generosity are hard to come by. This is especially the case with Anjani, who failing traditional methods resorts to some creative methods to get rid of the monkeys. The film eventually takes a turn for the serious but here too Vats is diligent enough not to descend into mawkishness and to still keep the proceedings low-key. Anjani’s sister is pregnant but the film does not take the conventional route when dealing with this. Many directors wouldn’t have resisted the pull of aligning the story beats with steps in her pregnancy but Vats treats her pregnancy neither as an inconvenience nor as an celebration.
Shardul Bharadwaj’s performance here is commendable. He is the exasperated worker early on, frustrated by his lack of success at work. Eventually, he becomes more and more unhinged, courtesy of both professional and personal trouble. The final scene is a triumph for both the director and Shardul. I am still mulling over it hours later and there is a lot to unpack, which is to the credit of the makers.
In Covid times, we take what we get but even if we weren’t in the middle of this pandemic, Eeb Allay Ooo would still be one of the best Hindi films of the year.
Alvel's blog 