Tag Archives: Shishir Sharma

Movie Review: Songs of Paradise (2025)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Songs of Paradise on Amazon Prime

Writer-director Danish Renzu’s love-letter to Kashmiri music history is vibrant and sweet. A charming cast recreates a world on the cusp of progress. Songs of Paradise is a delight.

Though not a biographical film, Renzu’s story is heavily inspired by the life of Raj Begum, Kashmir’s first female radio singer who died in 2016. Her achievements won her not just fame but also one of the Indian government’s highest civilian honors: the Padma Shree.

In Songs of Paradise, the character inspired by Raj Begum goes by the stage name Noor Begum (Soni Razdan). A framing device finds Noor in the modern day narrating her life to graduate student Rumi (Taaruk Raina), who’s writing a thesis on the history of popular music in Kashmir (and serving as an onscreen avatar for Renzu himself).

Before she started singing professionally in 1954, Noor Begum was simply Zeba Akhtar (Saba Azad). She grew up in Srinagar with her open-minded father (played by Bashir Lone) and conservative mother, Hameeda (Sheeba Chaddha).

Zeba earns money cleaning house for a music teacher, Master Ji (Shishir Sharma). Master Ji has no idea Zeba can sing, until he overhears her performing for a group of women at a family function. Recognizing her potential, Master Ji offers to train Zeba for free. He’s so impressed with her ability that he signs her up for the local radio station’s annual singing contest — something no other woman has done before.

“Freedom and progress were in the air,” the film notes. But not everyone is ready for change — not even Zeba herself. She hides her music lessons from her traditional mother under the guise of extra work hours. While Zeba enjoys her studies, she has no ambitions for them to lead to anything else. But she competes in the contest and wins decisively.

Her victory comes with a new job, performing songs live on the radio with the in-house band. Zeba’s presence causes upheaval in the male-dominated space, but soon everyone realizes the boost her heavenly voice gives the whole station. In trying to make the situation more equitable for her, Zeba champions change that makes things fairer for everyone, such as demanding grumpy station owner Mr. Kaul (Armaan Khera) read the names of every participating musician after every broadcast.

Zeba is interesting because she’s not trying to blaze a trail. Master Ji and her father want her to succeed because they care for her, and the station’s staff lyricist Azaad (Zain Khan Durrani) wants Kashmir to catch up with Bombay’s thriving film-music industry. But there’s a toll paid by trailblazers and those around them, and Zeba seems to know this. That’s the main reason she adopts the stage name Noor Begum. Yes, she’s afraid of what will happen if her mother finds out, but she’s also protective of her parents. Srinagar isn’t a huge town, and gossip travels fast.

Through her stern performance as Hameeda, Sheeba Chaddha makes sure we understand exactly why Zeba is scared of her mom. Hameeda levels a stare at Zeba that’s so withering that the film should come with a warning to protect delicate houseplants. Yet, when Noor Begum’s real identity is discovered, all of Zeba’s mother’s fears about social consequences come true.

Thankfully, Zeba and her family are saved by her greatest champion: Azaad, the station’s in-house lyricist. The two marry, and their romance is both tender and thrilling. They embody the style of the era and make a dashing couple. With Azaad’s support, Noor Begum capitalizes on the opportunities that arise as her soulful voice spreads beyond the borders of Kashmir.

One of Renzu’s points in making Songs of Paradise is to remind us how fragile history is. In an era before digital backups, physical copies of recordings were all that existed. Lose them, and you lose the performance, the song, the film. The credits of Songs of Paradise note that many of the songs used in the movie are recreations, likely due to there being no surviving physical recordings. The music in the film is a lovely augment to a charming story of progress and promise.

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Movie Review: Gaslight (2023)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Gaslight on Hulu

A young woman returns home to mend her relationship with her estranged father, only to find him missing in Gaslight. The creepy but unambitious mystery does just enough to keep viewers hooked until the end.

Meesha (Sara Ali Khan) hasn’t seen her father Ratan Singh Gaikwad since she was a little girl, before the accident that left Meesha unable to walk. Her childhood in the family’s ancestral palace was happy until Ratan had an affair with Rukmani (Chitrangda Singh). Meesha and her mother moved away, but Mom never got over the breakup and killed herself.

Years later, Meesha receives a surprise letter from her father asking her to come home for a visit. When she arrives, she’s greeted by Rukmani — now her father’s wife — who assures the young woman that Ratan is away on a work emergency and will return in a few days. But that night, Meesha sees a man she thinks is her father. She gets in her wheelchair and follows him to a remote part of the palace, only to fall down some stairs when she’s startled by a loud noise.

Though Meesha at first thinks that her father is in the house, a series of frightening incidents convince her that Ratan is actually dead — but no one believes her. Not Rukmani or the family physician Dr. Shekhawat (Shishir Sharma). Only sympathetic, handsome estate manager Kapil (Vikrant Massey) humors Meesha, while warning her to be careful of Rukmani and her allies.

Gaslight is legitimately frightening at times. Besides Meesha’s eerily preserved childhood bedroom, the palace is full of scary artwork. Bold is the homeowner who thinks Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son is suitable decor for a family abode.

The film could have pushed the spooky factor further by advancing Rukmani’s subplot in the story. At one point, she also begins to see things that aren’t there, which — had it happened in conjunction with Meesha seeing things at night — could have elevated the possibility of a supernatural cause for Ratan’s absence. Instead, Rukmani’s subplot isn’t highlighted until the second half of the film, after Meesha has already articulated her own, non-supernatural theory as to what is happening (a theory many in the audience will likely share by that point in the story).

Gaslight writer-director Pavan Kirpalani proved his ability to craft a chilling story with previous films like Phobia and Bhoot Police (both of which I thoroughly enjoyed). His latest feature leaves enough questions unanswered throughout to entice viewers to see things through, and the cast does a fine job with the material. Rahul Dev is good in a small role as a cop who is a more attentive investigator than he initially appears to be. It would have been nice if the film’s character development had avoided reinforcing traditional class hierarchy, but Gaslight doesn’t aspire to be more than what it is.

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Movie Review: Raazi (2018)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Buy the movie at Amazon or iTunes
Buy the soundtrack at iTunes

A young Indian spy marries into a Pakistani military family in the gripping period thriller Raazi, the latest in a string of hit performances by leading lady Alia Bhatt.

Bhatt plays Sehmat, a Delhi college student in 1971 summoned home at the behest of her father, Hidayat (Rajit Kapur), to receive two shocking pieces of news. First, Hidayat reveals that he has just months to live. Second, as a spy himself, Hidayat has spent years cultivating a friendship with Pakistani Brigadier Syed (Shishir Sharma), who hinted that the military is planning an attack against India. In order to uncover the plot, Hidayat fixed Sehmat’s marriage to Syed’s son, Iqbal (Vicky Kaushal), so that she may act as a spy in her father’s stead.

The movie’s very title (“Raazi” translates to “Agree”) informs us that this isn’t an order but a plan that requires Sehmat’s consent. Hidayat’s fatherly instincts kick in, and he encourages her to go back to college just hours after his revelation. There’s also a sense from Hidayat and other characters of his generation that young people deserve to make their own choices — in contrast to their own youth when the buildup and aftermath of Partition forced them to act out of necessity.

Sehmat agrees to the marriage plan, assuring her father that she’s acting out of an inherited sense of patriotism, not obedience. She undertakes a month of training under Khalid Mir (Jaideep Ahlawat), who also wants to be sure that she’s doing this of her own volition. He’s hard on Sehmat because — even though there’s a plan in place to rescue her in case of trouble — she’ll be largely on her own, responsible for finding intel and relaying it to Mir in secret via a convoluted spy network.

It’s worth noting in relation to Mir that the film’s story — at least initially — is kind of confusing, at least for those whose history education focused on countries other than India or Pakistan. A lot of characters with secret allegiances are introduced right away, and there are mentions of separatist groups — which Mir may have been a part of, I’m not sure — that most of the audience will get, but that flew past white, American me.

After the initial information overload, the story itself and the relationships between characters simplify. Most of the action takes place at the spy training ground or in and around Sehmat’s in-laws’ house, and details of the brewing military conflict are less important than what’s happening to Sehmat. The 2017 multilingual film The Ghazi Attack deals with events in the same time period, and watching it beforehand gave me enough background information for me to walk out of Raazi feeling like I understood what happened.

Raazi is ultimately about its characters more than the military conflict. Sehmat not only faces challenges as a rookie spy but as a new bride as well, forced to integrate into a new family. Pure luck finds her married to a good man who is as surprised by their abrupt betrothal as she is. Iqbal’s compassion allows their relationship to develop naturally, and their romance adds a layer of complexity that Sehmat did not anticipate.

Every actor in this movie is terrific — from key players like Sharma as Sehmat’s kind father-in-law to the guy working at the flower stall and the sympathetic military wives — enabling Raazi to cast a spell that never breaks. Kapur and Kaushal are stellar, whether they are in the background of a scene or if they’re sobbing with the young woman they both love.

Alia Bhatt’s star power is beyond question. She effortlessly portrays Sehmat’s youthful inexperience and her fierce determination, provoking the same protective instincts from the audience that Sehmat inspires in her mentors in espionage. This is a wonderful performance by Bhatt in a thoroughly engrossing film.

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