movie review of qala

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Qala Review : A haunting tale of validation and penance

In-depth analysis.

Our overall critic’s rating is not an average of the sub scores below.

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Users' Reviews

Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive . Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.

Seema David 410 days ago

Excellent movie. Refreshing one. A thousand times better than the 100 crore club movies. Watched it a few hours before and here i am! Still haunting!

Ram Thakur 630 days ago

Gem of a movie. Excellent direction, sterling performances by actors. Babil Khan makes an impressive debut. I see a promising career ahead of him. The apt use of Chamba folk song Ämma puchdi . . .", especially at the end of the movie.

M k 658 days ago

Underrated movie of 2022. Unique way of story telling started in India by this movie. Movie's cinematography is superb. This deserves more popularity.This musical movie gives vibes of the old songs .This movie has separate fanbase. Highly recommended movie

Rohit 665 days ago

Good Movie Nice and Well

Himanshu Chawda 666 days ago

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Qala Reviews

For those who like slow-paced drama-thrillers, this one’s going to be a treat.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 9, 2024

Anvita Dutt's film is a poignant, if familiar, story about artistic merit and the gendered pursuit of both affection and excellence.

Full Review | Jan 23, 2024

Marked by uplifting music and stirring lyrics, this tragic tale of a singer is worth admiring thanks to a formidable Swastika Mukherjee and a confident debut from Babil Khan.

Qala is an intoxicating juggernaut of self-doubt, destruction and road to atonement. It looks beyond the obvious to explore the underlying complexities of a mother-daughter equation.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 23, 2024

Qala is a sleep-inducing movie that looks spectacular. Anvita Dutt evidently wants to talk about a lot of things because she is aware that those topics exist. But she fails to unpack them through her characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 20, 2023

The filmmaking is engrossing, as writer-director Anvita Dutt employs a variety of angles to convey Qala’s deteriorating sense of self and grasp on reality.

Full Review | Jan 4, 2023

Whether in past or present, for two excruciating hours, the characters' arcs budge not one centimeter from where they started.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 7, 2022

It’s a film that romanticises female suffering, presenting it not as a horrid truth of patriarchal society, but as a rite of passage instead.

Full Review | Dec 7, 2022

Qala' is an absolute visual feast. Whether it is the snowy, desolate landscapes of a hamlet in the Himalayan foothills, or the interiors of a recording studio, the images are crafted with the precision of a surgeon by Siddharth Diwan.

Full Review | Dec 3, 2022

Amit Sial is a wonderfully smooth operator. Babil Khan, in his debut role, has a soulful air as Urmila’s golden-voiced protege.

Full Review | Dec 2, 2022

It looks like I’ve seen the most gorgeously-shot film of the year: each frame of Anvita Dutt’s sophomore feature ‘Qala’ is like an impressionist painting...

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 2, 2022

The film also gives debutant Babil Khan the space to deliver a poignant act as a gifted but ill-fated singer proud of his talent.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 2, 2022

One wishes the film mirrored Qala's temperament with a little more vigour. Qala, even in its persuasive best, ultimately feels lost in its stylistic embellishments to figure out how to make the underlying conflict visible.

The triumph of Qala is that it remains tragically human.

The film, seamlessly blends poetry, pain and politics.

Full Review | Dec 1, 2022

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Qala Review: Period Drama Rides On Impressive Turns By Triptii Dimri And Swastika Mukherjee

Qala review: the film also gives debutant babil khan the space to deliver a poignant act as a gifted but ill-fated singer proud of his talent..

<i>Qala</i> Review: Period Drama Rides On Impressive Turns By Triptii Dimri And Swastika Mukherjee

Cast: Triptii Dimri, Swastika Mukherjee, Babil Khan, Amit Sial and Varun Grover

Director : Anvita Dutt

Rating : 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Fastidiously designed, heavily stylised and occasionally stolid, Qala is a music-themed, female-centric period drama that looks and sounds absolutely glorious. Powered as much by director Anvita Dutt's screenplay as by its cinematography, production design, soundscape and editing, the film delivers enough by way of theme and treatment not to be merely a surface-level sensory experience.

In soul and spirit, Dutt's soulful sophomore venture scores on many fronts, not the least of which is its sensitive exploration of the mental toll that ambition, success and disillusionment can take on the emotionally vulnerable in a cutthroat world that gives nobody any quarters, certainly not if it is a girl scarred in the manner of the film's eponymous protagonist.

A meditative study of the daunting hurdles that stand in the way of a girl who deserves better, Qala is a worthy follow-up to the writer-director's debut film, Bulbbul. It sees Dutt reunite not only with Netflix, but also with producer Karnesh Sharma of Clean Slate Filmz, music director Amit Trivedi, cinematographer Siddharth Diwan and actor Triptii Dimri. The repeat collaboration yields another film that is chiselled with care, if only at times with overt artifice.

The occult makes way for the worldly. A young woman, pretty much like the child bride of Bulbbul , is up against a male-dominated society in which she has to work much harder than the men to get ahead in life. In the bargain, she must pay a high physical and emotional price.

The progress that the protagonist makes against all odds is slow and agonising, with her mother, who believes she has the girl's best interest at heart, playing both facilitator and spoilsport. There is something wrong with me, Qala intones when the family physician pays her visit after she has had a meltdown. That is a line she will have reason to repeat even when circumstances seem to be changing for the better.

Bulbbul was a feminist supernatural thriller set in 19th century Bengal. Qala , with an equally strong gender-sensitive core, is a tale that depicts the struggles of a young girl in pre-Independence India fighting for a niche in the fields of classical music and playback singing.

When a Solan boy Jagan Batwal (debutant Babil Khan), who literally comes in from the cold, infiltrates Qala 's world with the tacit encouragement of her mother Urmila (Swastika Mukherjee), the fragile girl faces a deep abyss and encounters noises in her head and fear in her heart. She is in danger of being deprived of the role she has always aspired to play as the undisputed bearer of a generations-old musical legacy.

A tragic past, her fraught relationship with her mother, the sudden advent of a male rival who threatens to scuttle her chances of making it big and her despairing response to the worsening situation combine to push Qala over the edge.

The director demonstrates a self-assured hand all the way through. She does not give in to the temptation of resorting to grand, overdramatic flourishes. She banks instead on a blend of suggestions and subtle sleights to capture the delicate state of Qala 's life and mind. Her screenplay keeps a tight leash on the protagonist's gradual descent into dire straits.

The line dividing the ponderous and the contemplative is inevitably thin. There are moments in Qala that seem a touch stagey, but the taut script ensures that the deliberate narrative arc moves along smoothly, never letting the focus shift from the struggles of the vocalist who resorts to measures that aggravate her relationship with her mother.

It is when dealing with the grey shades of the two principal characters - both mother and daughter have inner demons to ward off in the process of trying to realise their personal and familial dreams - that Qala is at its very best.

The depiction of two women determined to keep their music alive even as they take divergent routes in that direction is marked by understatement. The artistic choice to utilise visual methods rather than overtly emotional sweeps serves the film well for the most part. It carves out two differing portraits of pain, one of a mother looking for replacement for a son she has never had, the other of a daughter battling for agency in a milieu that militates against her need to assert and express herself.

Qala rides on a pair of impressive pivotal turns by Triptii Dimri and Swastika Mukherjee. They dig deep into the souls of two women who are as ambitious as they are susceptible to bouts of weakness and come up with compelling performances. The film also gives debutant Babil Khan the space to deliver a poignant act as a gifted but ill-fated singer proud of his talent.

Flitting between a feudal mansion in Himachal Pradesh and Calcutta, Qala is obviously a fictional tale. It, however, gives its supporting characters names that bring to mind Hindi film music greats of yore. The leading singer of the era is Chandan Lal Sanyal (Sameer Kochhar), a music composer is Sumant Kumar (Amit Sial) and a lyricist is Majrooh (Varun Grover). To top it all, Anushka Sharma appears in a black and white song sequence in which she evokes Madhubala.

Neither of these characters is derived from the realms of reality. Neither is the city that they work out of. Calcutta is the backdrop for a large part of the story but the city is recreated rather than real.

In one scene, an incomplete (presumably computer-generated Howrah Bridge looms in the background (in the form of a time-framing device) as Qala , at a crucial juncture of her career, negotiates with a demanding composer who believes that she isn't a finished article yet. The construction of the cantilever across the Hooghly began in the mid-1930s. With two ends of the bridge jutting outing over the river and link between them missing suggests that some years have passed.

A snow-covered Kashmir stands in for Himachal. The 'cheating' does not take anything away from the exquisite texture that the production designer and the director of photography are able to create and sustain. The constant interplay of light and shade, of warm interiors and cold exteriors, of subdued hues and extravagant glows lends the film visual variety and depth and accentuates the psychological dimensions that are at play.

Qala is out and out a director's film that has ample room for the technicians and the actors to give full rein to their skills. Meticulous to a fault, parts of the film might seem somewhat overwrought but the issues and concerns that it embeds in a story set eight decades ago have an unfailingly contemporary resonance.

Cast Triptii Dimri, Swastika Mukherjee, Babil Khan, Amit Sial and Varun Grover
Director Anvita Dutt

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Qala (2022) Movie Review – A visually breathtaking movie that artistically explores psychological themes

A visually breathtaking movie artistically exploring psychological themes

Anvita Dutt’s period musical drama “Qala”, is among the most visually beautiful movies of the year; each scene resembles an impressionist painting. Regardless of whether it’s a ferry floating over the Hooghly bridge or the snow-capped Himachal highlands, or even the rich, jewel-toned hues of a Calcutta evening, the backdrop is exquisite.

The figures in the forefront are seen next after viewers have taken in the precision with which the entire composition has been put together and it might just be what defines and influences how we watch the movie.

Anvita Dutta and Muhammad Asif Ali, the writers and directors of the movie, beautifully explores the mental landscapes of the primary characters. Following the eerie Bulbbul, she crafts a musical journey into the thoughts of a girl who resembles a cuckoo and is torn between passion and talent, expectations and realities.

The musically rich psychological horror movie is set during the pre-independence period and it paints a moving picture that revolves around Qala, a young, gorgeous, gifted vocalist who ventures into playback singing and finds fame. Sadly, though, underneath all the glitz, reverence, and honors, she is consumed by her desire to succeed, tormented by her past, and is fervently seeking approval from her estranged mother.

Qala soon begins to let her mind dominate as she struggles with the demands of the movie industry, which eventually results in her destruction.

It is challenging to like or feel any sympathy for Qala and yet you do. She seems to be a parasite; a morally grey character just like a cuckoo. According to a doctor, she ingested her twin brother’s nutrients while being in her mother’s womb. Qala chooses to eliminate the competition at her mom’s place by making a terrible choice after failing to live up to her mom Urmila’s expectations, a demanding thumri musician who is already past her prime.

The vintage lyrical drama, which features strong performances starring Tripti Dimri, Babil Khan, and Swastika Mukherjee, offers an artistic depiction of pressing issues including childhood trauma, the challenges faced in mother-daughter bonds, and the ugly side of stardom.

Throughout the movie, the filmmaker handles everything with assurance. She resists the need to overdo it with extravagant twists and theatrics. Instead, she relies on a mix of inferences and clever tricks to accurately depict the fragile nature of Qala’s reality and psyche. Additionally, she employs fine symbolisms, for instance, the cuckoo to reflect our morally questionable protagonist and the boat sequence to represent a moral conundrum as the protagonist faces a challenging decision in later scenes. Additionally, her screenplay tightly controls the character’s slow slide into psychological ruin.

The threshold between being reflective and becoming ponderous is often blurry in the movie. There are some stagey elements in Qala, however, the precise screenplay keeps the meticulous narrative arc moving forward without ever letting the spotlight leave the challenges of the musician who turns to actions that worsen her bond with her mother.

The psychological horror movie is at its strongest while addressing the darker undertones of the central leads. The mother-daughter duo, both face emotional wounds that they fight against while attempting to accomplish their own and their family’s aspirations.

The creative approach to use visual elements instead of blatantly dramatic sweeps benefits the movie. It outlines two distinct portrayals of suffering: one of a parent searching for a substitute for the child she never really had, and another of a daughter fighting for the love and acceptance of her mother.

The movie’s visual richness and complexity are enhanced by the ongoing interaction of complementary colors, warmer interiors and chilly exteriors, subtle hues and grandiose glows. This also exemplifies the psychological aspects that are at work.

Qala is clearly a made-up story that swings between a feudal palace in Himachal Pradesh as well as Calcutta, an aesthetically beautiful place. Additionally, it gives the supporting cast members names that paint a picture of legendary composers of old Hindi melodies.

Chandan Lal Sanyal serves as the most renowned musician of the time, while Majrooh is a lyricist and Sumant Kumar seems to be a music composer, and to add a crown to it all, Madhubala-inspired Anushka Sharma makes an appearance in what seems like a black and white musical scene.

A significant portion of the tale takes place in Calcutta, an unfinished and also quite possibly digitally generated Howrah Bridge hovers over Qala as she bargains with a demanding composer who reckons she isn’t quite prepared yet. This is a pivotal point in Qala’s professional life. Roughly halfway through the 1930’s, the work on the cantilever bridge over the Hooghly commenced. The bridge’s two ends sticking out into the river as well as the missing link connecting them indicate that some time has elapsed.

Triptii Dimri and Swastika Mukherjee’s stunning key performances carry Qala. They dive deep into the psyche of two brave women who are equally driven and prone to vulnerability, delivering outstanding performances. Babil Khan, who is making his movie debut here, is also given the opportunity to play a talented but unfortunate singer who is proud of his capabilities in a moving performance.

Qala is a visual treat and it makes use of its medium to present psychological elements. The movie brilliantly explores disturbing subjects while presenting sympathetic morally grey characters. The performers excel in their roles and genuinely bring the characters to life. This is a surprisingly compelling watch and one of the bigger surprises this month.

Feel free to check out more of our movie reviews here!

Verdict - 9/10 9/10

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Qala Review: An Enchanting Mix of Method and Madness

Director : Anvitaa Dutt Writer : Anvitaa Dutt Cast : Triptii Dimri, Swastika Mukherjee, Babil Khan, Amit Sial, Varun Grover

Qala opens with a hero. Her name is Qala Manjushree ( Triptii Dimri ), and she has a voice. She is the nation’s leading playback singer. Having just won the Golden Vinyl in the late 1930s, Qala is seated in a roomful of reporters. Before taking questions, however, she requests the sole female photographer in the room to capture her moment. She makes the men wait, posing for the lady, who in turn reacts like this isn’t the first time Qala’s picked her. Later, at a recording session, the film director wonders why she has a female secretary unlike other stars. Qala gently chides him for using a gender prefix – "you can just say secretary, no?” – while rehearsing with her music director, also a woman, and her queer lyricist. Her breakout song years ago was about the playful politics of consent, centered on a heroine (a cameo by producer Anushka Sharma ) who croons about an entitled lover unwilling to understand that “no means no”.

Everything about Qala’s career suggests that she is the voice of the marginalised – a trailblazing girlboss determined to use her privilege and push for equality in a deeply chauvinist system. Her own path to success has been troubled. So her inner strength is now in service to others like her, those who strive to break the glass ceiling in an industry averse to short vocal cords and long umbilical cords. Maybe, while she’s at it, she might channel this power and punish all the villains of her journey – a heartless mother, a male rival, a sexual predator. Perhaps she might avenge the brutality of being a woman. She is a hero, after all.

In many ways, appreciating Anvitaa Dutt’s haunting Qala merits a look at her haunted directorial debut, Bulbbul (2020). One is the spiritual sequel to the other. Bulbbul , set in the Bengal Presidency of 1901, tells the (love) story of a mysterious landlady who moonlights as a vengeful, man-eating ‘chudail’. She nurses a chilling past by day and preys on male offenders by night. Flashbacks convey that this former child bride was subjected to years of abuse by her husband and his family. The goth-horror period tone almost wills her supernatural transformation – into a creature worthy of her fantasy surroundings. The film follows M. Night Shyamalan ’s “the broken are the more evolved” superhero motif. It’s as though the story finds solace in the mythical after being disillusioned by man; the vigilante demon is the consequence – the afterlife – of all that suppressed trauma and rage. At one point in Qala , her lyricist friend, Majroo ( Varun Grover) , hints at something similar – he mentions that her silence might trigger a “sailaab” (flood) one day.

But the triumph of Qala is that it remains tragically human. The sailaab is more life than afterlife. It’s more Black Swan than Bulbbul . Qala’s transformation is not supernatural but natural – into an anti-creature at odds with the film’s fantasy surroundings. Flashbacks convey her years of suffering and abuse, but the only demons here are internal. We see not the consequence, but the toll of all that trauma. There is no chudail, no vigilantism; just a crisis of conscience. It’s just Qala and the voices in her head. If anything, her feminism emerges as a manner of doubling down on the toxic agency that she embraced as a teenager yearning for the validation of her mother. It becomes her way of purifying the womanhood she once weaponised – her body, soul, moral core – to reach the top. Slowly but steadily, her veneer cracks. Her image fades. Her arc addresses the callousness of a culture that often trivialises the mental health of celebrities as the “pressures of fame”. We blame it on something as public as fame, but movies like Qala remind us that stardom is only the medium. The catalyst can be something as private – as achingly ordinary – as heartbreak or familial discord.

To Dutt’s credit, the striking visual language of Qala expresses the anatomy of madness. It feels like part of the narrative detail, as though the story gets consumed by man despite being on the brink of the mythical. Amit Trivedi ’s best soundtrack since Manmarziyaan (2018) combines with Meenal Agarwal’s production design and Siddharth Diwan’s camerawork to create a psychological palette that works on multiple levels. It’s not just the artful symbolism – like Qala’s Calcutta apartment reflecting the greens of envy and blues of faded masculinity, her songs playing out like melancholic pleas to be heard, or her snowy childhood home replicating the starkness of mental isolation. It’s also the way Qala thinks. Unlike Bulbbul, it’s her mind that determines the sensory tone of this film. The world she sees is very different from the one we do, almost like she’s reimagining the aesthetic of the black-and-white era to renovate her own sanity. She longs for the indoor colours to be beautiful – and the symmetry to be poetic – so that it hides the ugliness inside her. Her obsession is softened by wall mirrors and moths around flames. But when she’s outside, her strings vanish. The sky turns dark and cloudy on the day she compromises her dignity. She hallucinates when the press hounds her for an interview on the street. The snow evokes not just her mindscape but her misdeeds too. A top-angle shot reveals her body crumpled at the center of an icy hedge maze in her yard, foreshadowing the role of a mercury maze in the plot.

There are other lovely touches, too. Qala, like the legendary Lata Mangeshkar, is fondly termed ‘didi’ (sister). Except to her, it also sounds like an accusation, because it’s being a sister that Qala has failed at. Her mother Urmila Devi’s (Swastika Mukherjee) resentment stems from the fact that Qala survived at the cost of a twin brother in the womb. A son that, the woman hoped, would do justice to their family’s classical legacy. When Urmila adopts a talented orphan named Jagan (Babil Khan), who becomes Qala’s stepbrother of sorts, her jealousy shapes the story. Then there’s the choice of period – pre-Independence India – that’s just about cosmetic enough to convey that social shackles like patriarchy are timeless. The writing isn’t afraid to sound a bit contemporary – for instance, when Majroo uses a MeToo-adjacent line to comfort Qala – in its pursuit of cultural fluidity.

The cast bleeds into the film, in all the right ways. Swastika Mukherjee is eerily unsettling as the parent that subverts the Indian father-son dynamic. The late Irrfan’s son, Babil Khan , has a stirring screen presence; his face is lit in part to invoke some of his father’s most memorable roles. You keep looking for his Jagan to give Qala a bigger reason to hate him, but his only crime is that he’s a true artist; even the camera thinks so. Triptii Dimri is strangely persuasive as Qala herself. Her performance brings to mind a sheltered innocence that one usually associates with a Janhvi Kapoor character. Qala’s emotions are stunted, just like her sense of cruelty. Her imposter syndrome is literal. Her personality is derived from pieces of the people around her – evident in how she imitates her mother while seducing a man, or even the way she steals Jagan’s words to explain her condition to a doctor. There are shades of Devdas (2002) in her fraught relationship with Urmila Devi – a mother-daughter story that wears the drama of an unrequited love story.

At times, it appears like the film’s internet-age writing is taunting Qala for being fragile – for being too childish to allow for a supernatural twist. But Dutt’s script implies that a woman’s agency need not only be restricted to the act of having control; it can also be defined by the freedom to lose control. Qala’s sound is, for better or worse, a phonetic subset of being unsound. While watching Bulbbul , I remember observing that Hindi cinema is biased towards performative male breakdowns. Stories too often stage sadness – rather than madness – as the cornerstone of female heartache. Qala rectifies that. Because it is not reluctant to admit that one condition is simply the sequel to the other.

Qala Movie Review: Tripti Dimri, Babil Khan's musical period drama marks the journey of envy and jealousy

The movie qala impressively brings together the beauty and the dark reality of the music world, backed by great direction, cinematography and background score. the film is not just a must-watch but an experience to be lived..

Movie Name: Qala
Critics Rating: 3.5 / 5
Release Date: DEC 1, 2022
Director: Anvita Dutt
Genre: Psychological thriller

Qala Movie Review: The impeccable portrayal of envy and jealousy by Tripti Dimri and Babil Khan in the movie has won the hearts of the audience. The relationship between a mother (played by Swastika Mukherjee) and a daughter (played by Tripti Dimri) in a male-dominated society and the struggles to fit in the space are well displayed in the movie. Anvita Dutt’s psychological drama ‘Qala’ is like an impressionist painting. The background is perfect, whether it is the snowy mountains of Himachal, or the warm, jewelled tones of a Calcutta night, with a boat gliding down the Hooghly bridge.

Set in the 1930s, when Calcutta was the hub of Hindi film music, Qala tells the story of a female playback singer caught in a web of defeats and deceits, part of which are of her own making. Her life revolves around music and her mother. Single-minded pursuit of the former distances her from the love of the latter. The consequences are disastrous. Both the actors Tripti and Babil justified the characters. Marking the first step in Bollywood, Irfan Khan's son Babil has rightfully taken over the legacy of his father. A glimpse of his late father is evidently visible in his acting skills.

As a young girl, Qala wishes to become a great singer, mostly to win her mother Urmila's approval. The flashbacks reveal how they live isolated in a dimly-lit house in the Himachal, where her mother tells her that she has to work harder than any man to achieve success as a playback singer. Qala constantly shifts from the present to the past, as Anvita tries to situate her views in the mind of her female protagonist. Whether we see her hallucinating or crumbling down with nervousness, there is a certain confidence in the way the director constructs the narrative fabric of Qala. Yet, Qala's journey is built in a suspended deceit that does not quite know where to focus.

The constant interplay of light and shade, of warm interiors and cold exteriors, of subdued hues and extravagant glow lends the film visual variety and depth along with accentuating the psychological dimensions that are at play.

Gorgeously shot by Siddharth Diwan, each scene is mapped out like a painting. Meenal Agarwal's production design serves as a dreamlike space for these characters to inhabit.

Overall, Qala impressively brings together the beauty and the dark reality of the music world, backed by great direction, cinematography and background score. The film is not just a must-watch but an experience to be lived.

Watch Qala trailer:

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‘Qala’ review: As a playback singer unravels, moths, mothers and metaphors abound

Anvitaa dutt’s follow-up to ‘bulbbul’ is being streamed on netflix..

Anvitaa Dutt has followed up her beguiling debut feature Bulbbul (2020) with another heretical tale of thwarted female desire. While Bulbbul rewrote the rules of witchcraft lore in feudal Bengal through a feminist heroine, Qala presents a counter-narrative to accounts of women in the early years of the Hindi film industry.

Qala shares with Bulbbul a fantastical approach, hyper-real backdrops and anachronistic detail. Although the Hindi-language film takes place in the 1930s and 1940s, revisionist ambition guides the dialogue (some of which includes contemporary English phrases and sentiments), Amit Trivedi’s interpretive score and the treatment of stock characters from the period.

Qala (Triptii Dimri), a playback singer at the peak of her game, tells a journalist after receiving her latest burst of praise that she feels as though she has reached home, exhausted, to find her mother is waiting for her.

It’s a gossamer lie, spun by Qala to maintain a facade that rips upon close scrutiny. Qala’s thorny relationship with her mother Urmila (Swastika Mukherjee), Urmila’s preference for the gifted folk singer Jagan (Babil Khan), and Qala’s desperate need for validation have brought her to the edge of insanity. This black swan harbours painful secrets, some of it the result of Urmila’s intransigence and some of it flowing from Qala’s circumstances.

Despite the loyal support of her secretary Sudha (Girija Oak), the soothing counsel of lyricist Majrooh (Varun Grover) and the encouragement of composer Naseeban (Tasveer Kamil), Qala flutters and flails, much like the moth that is irresistibly attracted to the flame that will eventually consume it.

The metaphor of the moth that dominates Dutt’s screenplay becomes literal when it appears as a motif on Qala’s saris and accessories scattered about her home. There are other metaphors too, some less explicit than others and all the more effective as a result.

Qala harbours unsettling memories of her loveless childhood, giving the narrative the surreal flavour of a waking nightmare. Another metaphor, whose meaning solders Qala with Jagan, is inventively explored through scenes, costumes, and sets.

Qala has been released on Netflix, as was Bulbbul . What is lost by a small-screen viewing might be gained by the unique advantage of the streaming experience: a particular tablueax can be frozen to take in cinematographer Siddharth Diwan’s lighting exercises and Meenal Agarawal’s evocative production design . This film needs a very large television set to admire Agarwal’s dazzling Art Nouveau-inspired sets and Veera Kapur Ee’s delicate costumes.

Inky blacks and metallic greys in Qala’s ancestral home in Himachal Pradesh give way to lighter fabrics and pastel shades after she makes her mark in Kolkata. Snow machines, fog machines and artificial lights are hard at work in a highly stylised narrative that sets out to boldly reimagine what we think we know about a woman’s place in the showbiz hustle.

Qala’s dealings, particularly with music composer Samant Kumar (Amit Sial), underscore the vulnerability of women in the film industry. There are shards of reality in Qala’s efforts to shake off the burden of a classical music legacy to craft a career in showbiz. Does this performer with the sweet and virginal voice remind some of us of a playback singer who emerged in this period?

The dance between overtly constructed backdrops and Qala’s acutely real trauma is not always graceful. A feeling of eternal winter abounds in a 119-minute narrative that is cold to the touch despite dealing with the passions of the heart.

The film’s dollhouse-like quality is creakiest when exploring the tortured mother-daughter relationship. The mesh of style and intent is smoothest in Dutt’s analysis of the treacherous ways of showbiz, which wounds women more than men.

The archness to the performances and dialogue delivery poses an insurmountable challenge to Triptii Dimri. The ease with which Dimri portrayed complex characters in Laila Majnu (2018) and Bulbbul is missing in Qala , and not just because her character is required to teeter on the edge at nearly all times. The leadenness of Swastika Mukherjee’s silver jewellery-laden diva too isn’t just a result of characterisation.

The actors in shorter roles, who are unburdened with having to convey meaning through metaphor, fare much better. Amit Sial is a wonderfully smooth operator. Babil Khan, in his debut role, has a soulful air as Urmila’s golden-voiced protege.

Varun Grover has an affecting cameo as a lyricist who sees through Qala’s bravado. Apart from paying tribute to Hindi cinema’s great Urdu wordsmiths, Grover has one of Qala ’s sharpest lines: “The times change. This is an old trick of time.”

The art of ‘Qala’: Art Nouveau and ‘a lot of drama in the darkness’

Qala review
Anvitaa Dutt
Triptii Dimri
Swastika Mukherjee

COMMENTS

Qala Review : A haunting tale of validation and penance
Qala Review: Qala is an intoxicating juggernaut of self-doubt, destruction and road to atonement. It looks beyond the obvious to explore the underlying complexities of a mother-daughter equation.
Qala - Rotten Tomatoes
Marked by uplifting music and stirring lyrics, this tragic tale of a singer is worth admiring thanks to a formidable Swastika Mukherjee and a confident debut from Babil Khan. Jan 23, 2024. Qala...
Qala - Movie Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes
Qala is an intoxicating juggernaut of self-doubt, destruction and road to atonement. It looks beyond the obvious to explore the underlying complexities of a mother-daughter equation.
Qala Review: Period Drama Rides On Impressive Turns By ...
Set in the 1930s, when Calcutta was the hub of Hindi film music, Qala tells the story of a female playback singer caught in a web of defeats and deceits, part of which are of her own making. Her...
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We review the Netflix Indian film Qala, which does not contain spoilers. There have been films that highlight mental health and suicide in different ways, but the way writer-director Anvita Dutt connects the visuals with Qala Manjunshree’s (Triptii Dimri) emotions is powerful.
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The vintage lyrical drama, which features strong performances starring Tripti Dimri, Babil Khan, and Swastika Mukherjee, offers an artistic depiction of pressing issues including childhood trauma, the challenges faced in mother-daughter bonds, and the ugly side of stardom.
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Qala movie review: The film stars Tripti Dimri, Babil Khan, and Swastika Mukherjee among others. It looks like I’ve seen the most gorgeously-shot film of the year: each frame of Anvita Dutt’s sophomore feature ‘Qala’ is like an impressionist painting.
Qala Review: An Enchanting Mix of Method and Madness
The sailaab is more life than afterlife. It’s more Black Swan than Bulbbul. Qala’s transformation is not supernatural but natural – into an anti-creature at odds with the film’s fantasy surroundings. Flashbacks convey her years of suffering and abuse, but the only demons here are internal.
Qala Movie Review: Tripti Dimri, Babil Khan's musical period ...
Critics Rating: 3.5 / 5. Release Date: DEC 1, 2022. Director: Anvita Dutt. Genre: Psychological thriller. Qala Movie Review: The impeccable portrayal of envy and jealousy by Tripti Dimri and...
Qala movie review: An ambitious but unwieldy saga of a singer ...
Qala (Triptii Dimri), a playback singer at the peak of her game, tells a journalist after receiving her latest burst of praise that she feels as though she has reached home, exhausted, to find...