3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Raat Akeli Hai on Netflix

Honey Trehan’s terrific directorial debut Raat Akeli Hai is, on the surface, an engrossing murder mystery. Dig deeper, and the film is about the way men police women’s behavior, creating conditions that are immediately bad for women, and ultimately bad for the men as well.

Raat Akeli Hai‘s opening sequence is visually arresting and chilling. A sedan drives on a lonely highway. The lights of a truck flick on. It chases the car in the dark, knocking it off the road. Silhouetted against the the truck’s blinding lights, a man steps toward the car to make sure the sedan driver and his female passenger are dead.

The shocking start transitions to a police officer’s wedding, five years later. One of the guests —  Inspector Jatil Yadav (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) — stews as his mother Sarita (Ila Arun) shows his photo to a pretty woman, hoping to find her son a bride, too. Jatil’s subsequent argument with his mom is interrupted when he’s called to a crime scene.

An elderly rich man is murdered on the night of his own wedding. It’s a second marriage for Raghuveer Singh (Khalid Tyabji) — and to a much younger woman — so it was a quiet affair. Quiet enough that no one even heard him get shot.

There are plenty of suspects in the house, including Singh’s adult children, his in-laws, a maid, and the new bride, Radha (Radhika Apte). The only thing they have in common is that they all hated the dead man.

Radha seems to be the main suspect, and her reluctance to talk to Jatil frustrates him. But she slips him a note reminding him that they’ve met before. It was five years ago, when he stopped her from jumping off a train, saving her life — only for her to wind up here.

This reminder prompts Jatil to do a proper investigation, rather than pin the murder on Radha like everyone else in the police department wants him to do.. Other members of the household had motive and opportunity, too, not to mention some lingering questions about Singh’s first wife’s death.

No one in Raat Akeli Hai is happy. Crucially, that includes Jatil. He’s bought into the thinking that women are something to be controlled. He’s still single because he wants a wife who is “well-behaved” and “knows her limits.” Presumably, he’ll be the one defining those limits.

The conundrum is his mother. Filial norms dictate that he respect her, and he does even when she does stuff that drives him crazy. But even though she doesn’t behave the way he wishes she would, it’s obvious how much she loves him. She means it when she says her son looks as handsome as Ajay Devgn in his uniform and sunglasses.

She’s also an example of what marital equality should look like, something that he finally appreciates during a conversation with her. As she’s telling Jatil the same story about his deceased father for the millionth time, she breaks down and says, “I miss him.” They were partners who cared deeply for each other and their son. They were happy.

Contrast with the deceased’s household, where everyone views each other with suspicion and distrust. Singh was a pervert, with a bedroom full of erotic art, pornography, and Polaroids of abused women. But he was also wealthy and closely connected to the shady politician Munna Raja (Aditya Srivastava). There was no way to escape Singh’s grasp, so everyone lived in survival mode.

Jatil finally understands that Radha’s hesitancy in opening up to him comes from hard-earned lessons. Though he’d always wanted a submissive, docile wife, her admires Radha for her courage and resilience. Maybe exerting control won’t get him the happy marriage that his parents had. Maybe he’d rather be with a woman who is strong and brave. Someone like Radha.

All of the character growth and theming in Raat Akeli Hai is done in a subtle, gradual way. There’s nothing heavy-handed or abrupt in Trehan’s interpretation of Smita Singh’s smart screenplay. The entire cast has the acting chops to pull this approach off, and Trehan trusts them to do it.

Trehan runs one of the production companies behind Raat Akeli Hai — Macguffin Pictures — with Udta Punjab director Abhishek Chaubey, who serves as Supervising Producer on the film. One of Chaubey’s duties included working on the English subtitles, which are outstanding. They include classic noir lines, like Radha’s response when Jatil asks who she thinks killed Singh: “Could be anyone. Someone braver than me… Someone more desperate. But I don’t know anyone like that.”

Links

• Raat Akeli Hai at Wikipedia
• Raat Akeli Hai at IMDb
• My review of Udta Punjab