Leila comprises six episodes, of runtimes varying between 40 to 50 mins on average. Created by Urmi Juvekar, the series – based on Prayaag Akbar’s novel of the same name – has been directed by Deepa Mehta, Shanker Raman and Pavan Kumar. It stars Huma Qureshi in the lead, with Siddharth playing a notable role.
Leila, for reasons hard to fathom, sets the timeline in 2047. It takes digs at the current political situation, using a fictional land called Aryavarta ruled by one Mr Joshi, who is ubiquitous, like the Big Brother of 1984, his posters everywhere. The people and children of Aryavarta are brainwashed, constantly parroting the words fed to them about how Aryavarta is their mother – with an air of Brave New World, borrowing gloomy streaks from The Hunger Games and V for Vendetta, spruced with a nationalistic fervour. The paradox though lies in how little the world seems to have evolved in 2047, rickety buses and tankers an excellent example to prove how unimaginative the makers have been with the storyline. The world hasn’t gone anywhere in 28 years, they seem to assume.
Aryavarta’s art design annoys anyone well-versed with dystopian movies or novels. Is Aryavarta a country, a city, a state – that is hard to understand from what is on display. What we see is largely one big city, which is made up of several sectors, each sector for a different community, separated by high walls. Then there are the slums which exist beyond the high walls, where people deal with squalor, black rain, dust, pollution and an acute water scarcity. The moral police punish couples indulging in inter-community marriages, abducting the women and torturing them in a Purity Centre, and the mixed-blood kids are sold to childless parents with money or power.
Amidst all this is Shalini Rizwan Chowdhury (Huma Qureshi), who loses her husband Rizwan (Rahul Khanna) and child Leila, her happy affluent family attacked by the purification agents on the contrived pretext that Shalini and Rizwan bribed their way into getting enough water for their swimming pool.
Shalini’s arduous years take her through the Purity Centre and the Labour Camp as she tries to find traces of her missing child, only to encounter a dastardly truth in the end. Siddharth plays Bhanu, whose exact official role – one of the many screenplay flaws – is muddled, but he is largely shown as a contractor of labourers. His role grows in the latter half of the series, as the story meanders from being a mother’s travails to the struggle of the Resistance, rebels trying to win back the country from the clutches of Mr Joshi.
The context is not really novel. Surveillance, scarcity of resources, some powerful people enjoying all the riches, a supreme leader imposing his will in the name of culture and hardcore nationalism, a Resistance, conspiracies, and a helpless character growing in her ardent desire for something – all these are themes well-covered in such sagas. This is where Leila succeeds partially in proving an Indian context (a first of sorts for Indian series-lovers), and fails too.
Leila isn’t boring and, for a while, the viewer is invested in what happens to Shalini, and in how she would find her way out of the hellhole she is banished to – think The Handmaid’s Tale. But then, things get too convenient – think Game of Thrones, Season 8. The climax is flimsy, and at the risk of giving out a SPOILER, makes you scratch your head and wonder – Is this your grand plan, Mr Resistance?
The directors seem to focus extraordinarily on Huma’s Shalini, but Shalini is not the woman the story demands her to be. Mostly, she is lacklustre and at times outright dumb (like the female protagonist in Blacklist). Shalini almost always seems to squeeze into lucky breaks – she accidentally gets to work at a powerful engineer’s house, accidentally ends up being liked by Mr Joshi’s No 2, accidentally finds a kid to help her escape from a difficult situation, accidentally keeps surviving tight situations. Most of it almost feels like divine provenance, or rather convenient and sloppy writing. The screenplay is quite loose with how things unravel for her, not so much by her design, but by sheer coincidence. After a while it gets annoying.
That makes it hard to assess Huma’s performance. Is she inarticulate, almost exasperatingly expressionless because the character demands her to be, or because she is supposed to feel a plethora of emotions – husband murdered in front of her eyes, child taken away, her one-time maid now enjoying the riches she used to, karma coming back to teach her a lesson or two – all inside her and mute it on the surface.
Sans the high-tech gadgets some officials use (just fancy projectors, and transparent screen laptops and phones) and a tattoo, like the one in In Time, that has a chip, everything is so present-day. It is almost like instead of 2047 you are looking at 2019. The set designs are not grand; the buildings and malls are eerily and depressingly deserted (exaggerated even for a dystopian drama) but again, right out of the present-day world.
The series had potential and may still redeem itself, given where it stops. It has powerful scenes that will leave you distraught – like the one where women are coerced by Guru Ma – fancy term for the purity centre disciplinarian – and his squad into rolling on the leftovers after the moral police has finished its meals. The series is capricious in its mediocrity and brilliance.
Just when you anticipate that Siddharth’s waiflike presence and unflinching eyes have a bigger story, you are forced to confront Huma’s obstinate nonchalance that is never in sync with the context/her character’s situation. She is pivotal and yet, her character is barely fleshed out. Siddharth’s Bhanu never evolves into anything you can feel for. The low-budget dystopian world – which almost tells you don’t look at the detail, just focus on the storyline (because seriously, in 2047, who would still use easily detectable stealth cameras, and why would powerful people listen to ghazals on a gigantic stereo deck) – could get on your nerves for the lapses. Where are all the rich people living in multi-storey buildings, why are the malls empty, why are there so few students in the school, and why is the inauguration of the supreme leader’s dream project attended by just a handful of guests?
These and many more questions dilute the experience of watching Leila. It starts with a promise, and the first two episodes are mostly riveting. But the saga loses its shine from there on – confused whether it should take a turn towards being a science dystopia or a social dystopia. Neither purpose is achieved, thanks largely to a limpid central character and writing that is presumptuous and gives up midway. All in all, it is a dystopian drama that sparkles at times, but suffers due to a hurried screenplay at other times.
PS: As a side-note, I am glad such a satire on the state of affairs hasn’t been censored, or banned, yet!
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.