Neeyat: This Indian Rendition Of Glass Onion Can't Sustain Its Suspense

A billionaire invites his closest friends to celebrate his birthday. These are people he’s known for years, shares secrets and proximity with. He has chosen the place and the rules. They arrive at his opulent palace, armed with phones but no signal. Everyone settles in, and then someone new joins the party. No one knows them, save the host. Midway through the revelry, one of them dies. Secrets spill like blood. Everyone appears to have a motive. The plot thickens with forgery of identity, obscene display of wealth, as the newest entrant narrows down the killer.

This could very well be the description of Rian Johnson’s 2022 pulpy murder mystery Glass Onion, the second film in his Knives Out series. But this, in fact, is the premise of Anu Menon’s new outing, Neeyat, a whodunnit that unfolds with competence and intrigue till it circumvents logic and settles for contrived resolution.

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To be fair, the film starts out strong. A billionaire absconding from India, Ashish Kapoor (Ram Kapoor in his Manish Chaudhari era) has called friends and family to his Scottish palace. Amidst the forecast of stormy weather, guests start pouring in. There is his brother in-law Jimmy Mistry (Rahul Bose in his unhinged era), his former flame Noor Suri (Dipannita Sharma), her cosmetic surgeon husband Sanjay (Neeraj Kabi), their aspiring filmmaker son. There is also his cocaine-addicted son Ryan Kapoor (Shashank Arora) arriving with his new partner Gigi (Prajakta Koli); a trusted tarot card reader, Zar (Niki Aneja Walia), Kapoor’s 28-year-old girlfriend Lisa (Shahana Goswami), his young niece, and a loyal aide Kay Patel (Amrita Puri). Entrusted to look after them is a butler called Tanveer (Danesh Razvi).

As the narrative unravels, revelations follow. Kapoor has fled with a debt of 20,000 crores. He hasn’t paid his staff for over two years, resulting in eight suicides cases back home. Noor is unhappy with the way her husband grovels before the businessman for favours. Their house in London is funded by him. Mistry, a queer man, is convinced his sister was killed by the husband. Ryan is easily instigated. As the waves crash against the shore, evoking the distinct opening-credits vibe of Big Little Lies, Zar picks out a card that says ‘Death’.

On the surface, Neeyat is a smart Indian rendition of the eat-the-rich narrative tilt evidenced across Western shows and films. The characters stand at the intersection of excess and annoyance. When someone asks Bose’s character what is his source of income, he says, “My surname is my source of income”. Menon imbues this with civic resonance as she takes the familiar story of rich Indian buisnessmen fleeing the country under debt and fictionalises it. Kapoor’s character, who has lost all his money in an aviation passion project, is cleverly modelled on Vijay Mallya. I also liked the way the outing plays with tropes.

Most whodunnits are inherent morality plays. The grim news of a dead person is offset with gradual disclosure of them being terrible people. Their death then becomes an act of justice, even when punishable by law. In Neeyat, the terrible person stands at the center without cover. Kapoor is affable and warm, who considers himself as someone who went too far with his passion. He is also aware of the damage it has caused. But before the film could find a way to punish him, Kapoor does that on his own. The new guest at his party is Meera Rao (Vidya Balan in her bangs era), a CBI officer. The entrepreneur has invited her all the way from India to surrender. The news irks the guests — each of whom is dependent on Kapoor for money — and sharpens their motives.

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This is good buildup, and despite apparent similarities with Glass Onion, I was taken in. I had also forgotten what it feels like to gasp collectively under the blanket of darkness in a theatre. The problems begin in the second half. The more it moves towards untangling the knots, the more it gets caught up in the mess. Written by Menon, Girvani Dhyani, Advaita Kala and Priya Venkataraman, the film relies heavily on contrivances and coincidences, which despite the off-kilter tone, do not work.

As Neeyat starts explaining itself (and it explains a lot), the screenplay reveals to be too reverse engineered to evoke willful suspension of disbelief; the intent was always to state the resolution and not arrive at it. In more ways than one, Menon’s outing is reminiscent of Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani, the enduring thriller in which a pregnant woman (also Balan) avenges the death of her husband by wielding her gender. But if Kahaani hasn’t aged as well as it should have, it is because repeated watchings underline the narrative deception, also a convenient shorthand, it indulged in. Neeyat (Kala is one of writers in both films) does the same, but this time the deceit is so orchestrated, and in hindsight so implausible, that it does not sustain the vulnerability of a first-time viewing.

A whodunnit is supposed to raise questions and answer them. It is also supposed to make you want to invest in the person responsible for finding the ‘who’ in the deed. Think of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot. Think also of Feluda. Our interest in the story stems from our interest in that character. They are inaccessible but enigmatic. Menon’s film, however, dismantles this trope by depicting the central figure as the most impregnable. Balan is compelling in this non-showy role, committing herself even when unaided by the writing. The result is Neeyat leaving behind more questions than answering them and concluding as a forgettable party.