Just days in the life of J Dey? No!

Faustianrdquo is what I hear director Kanu Behl repeatedly refer to his film Despatch as we sit for a postpremiere chat with his lead actors before a live audience at the MAMI film festivalI donrsquot know if anyone in the audience referred to their phone to look up Faustian instead Neither should you It basically means selling your soul to Satan making a deal with the devil lsquoFaustian bargainrsquo as it wereKanu also uses it for the portrayal of journalists in films forevermdashtheyrsquore either crooks or unimpeachably virtuousMuch like the world he reports onmdashthe crimejournalist protagonist Manoj Bajpayee of Despatch fully operates in the Faustian greyPopular Bombay crime journalist S Hussain Zaidi infamously belittled his brethren as pliant ldquomunshisrdquostenographers of the police in Suketu Mehtarsquos book Maximum City 2004In equal measure desperately and deliciously dark remarkably detailed Despatch shines a blurry light on the more fatally dangerous side Itrsquos a hard watchThe film drops on Zee5 likely in December 2024 Why summarily introduce you to it now Because sometimes you wanna be the one to say you read it here first As it aptly should be this timeDespatch is evidently inspired by the life of slain crime amp investigations editor JyotirmoyJ Dey 19552011 who worked in the same papernewsroom midday Irsquom reporting this fromAlthough the filmrsquos lead character Joy Bag works for Despatch alluding to the rival Mumbaidaily Afternoon Despatch amp Courier that doesnrsquot exist anymoreThe film will feel close to home for print journalists in general as it opens with a suitably unsexy newsroom From the calendar flying in the backdrop you learn itrsquos March 2012Which explains the advent of ldquodigital firstrdquo approach to newsmdashoccasioning excitement as a managerial diktat and sneer from puristsTo think of how only 12 years back can feel like a period film in the context of mediatechnology no This is beyond observing R2000 notes in circulation or Blackberry for smartest phones on the screenLet alone other challenges including press freedommdashjust the fact of social mediarsquos current primacy in the dissemination of opinion news fake or otherwise in 2024 could wholly alter the story of Despatch set in 2012 RightKanu tells me the period apart he wished the story written with Ishani Banerjee to be timelessmdashprobing the totally indecipherable mess the world has seemed to everyone for a while nowIntricacies of the plot vague as they seem isnrsquot so important eithermdashlooking into collusion between big crime and big business while most roads lead to realestate The world is lsquoflatrsquo after all Always been Check Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro Early rsquo80s Same citySure this is a crimeprocedural albeit set within journalism But itrsquos more a film framed around a wellrounded character to whom shit happensmdashwhile he punches way above his weight as reporters inevitably domdashgetting deeper into shit stillThatrsquos Joy mysterious journalist covering the joyless crime beat from the dark trenches in Despatch How does he compare with J Dey himselfEveryone in the midday newsroom speaks of him similarly as a quiet secretive bloke who kept his desk spotlessly clean Even the Crime Branch that searched his office computer upon death found nothing in his harddriveThe underworld was in J Deyrsquos head Itrsquos incredible how many Bombay filmmakers derived their crime stories from himHansal Mehta spoke to him researching Shahid 2012 J Dey got murdered shortly after Hansal made the series Scoop 2023 on this episode that was more on the life of the accused Jigna Vora J Dey Prosenjit Chatterjee was hardly in itWhat instantly strikes you about Joy in Despatch though is how a new man has got injected into Manoj You see him stark naked literally tooHe credits this to the director he actively scoped out for work after Titli 2014mdashthat crazy crimenoir about Delhirsquos carjackersMuch as he asked for it Manoj seemingly had a rough time making Despatch with the indefatigable overdemanding KanuAt some point the actor had to calm the director down ldquoItrsquos just a filmrdquo ldquoNo itrsquos notrdquo the director replied Manoj claims hersquos felt like a different actor since Havenrsquot seen him bettermdashnot even Gali Guleiyan 2017 his most underratedDespatch shot like a badass by Siddharth Diwan feels furthest from a film over the two elements that movies tend to superficially choreograph the mostmdashsex and violenceThe authenticity is achieved by capturing both the primal acts in the sheer sloppiness they occur with in real life Consider the clumsy police raidshootout sequence in a dockyard in Despatch when you get the chanceItrsquos the wonderful Shahana Goswamirsquos favourite scene in the film Rightly so Shahana plays Joyrsquos wife going through divorce in the movieSomething tells me the overworked Joymdashwith a wife committed girlfriend brilliant debutant Arrchitta Aggarwal plus the momentary tightsqueeze Rii Sen on the sidemdashleads a far more colourful life than the superguarded J Dey ever didThe toughest scene for Shahana to shoot she says was Manojrsquos prickly stubble causing faceburns since the lengthy lovemaking scenes also came with neverending takes for the director Okay thatrsquos TMI too much informationMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper