Locations in Europe: Scotland, UK
Storyline
Star(s): Amitabh Bachchan, Amrita Singh, Taapsee Pannu
Songs/Dance/Action Sequences: All songs shot in different locations of Scotland. They convey internal turmoil as background songs. None of the characters sing on screen002E
Indian/ International Crew: Collaboration between Indian and international crews.
Language: Hindi
Director/Producer Director: Sujoy Ghosh Producers: Hetvi Karia, Gauri Khan, Sunil Kheterpal, Sandeep Sharma Co-producers: Gaurav Bose, Akshai Puri
Line Producer/Executive Producer/Associate Producer Line Producers: Sham Chavan, Chris Martin, Sarwar Mohammad, Ssunny Surani, Akhilesh Yadav
Film Location Analysis
By Ranjani Mazumdar
Badla is structured like a whodunit with a narrative that moves between the present and the past, framed as a conversation between a lawyer and his allegedly accused high-profile client. This extended conversation provides the arc to the narrative, with flashbacks that connect visual details to the events of the past. The truth is blurred and unclear for the spectator, so we move between different interpretations of the events until the final confession, where the killers of the two men are revealed. This structure is absorbing, and to lend value to the flashbacks, Scotland is used creatively. Badal Gupta is the father of one of the murdered victims, but this is revealed only at the end.
The film uses the cold, wintry landscape of Scotland to create an atmosphere for a psychological exposition of crime and revenge. The snow-covered terrain, isolated forest areas, lakes, and water fronts are drawn into the storytelling arc. The film’s combining of the modern urban setting of Naina’s apartment interior with various other sites provides the mystery with a texture that borrows from the atmospheric imagination so prevalent in Scandinavian crime genres. The apartment is designed as a modern, luxurious but minimalistic space with lots of art and objects strewn around. From the window we can see other buildings, especially the one across where Rani has parked herself to keep tabs on Naina. This apartment complex is constantly intercut with a range of locations that are more than just backdrops; they trigger a series of events that are important in the consolidation of the narrative, in which an accident inside a dense forest area becomes the lynchpin for a range of psychological portraits that involve friendships, extra marital affairs, the experience of parents losing a son, the desire for revenge as a form of justice, and the forceful nature of ambition. Natural landscape and modern built spaces converge evocatively in the film.
Badla opens with Badal walking across the South Portland Suspension Bridge, which hangs over the river Clyde in Glasgow. Built over a period of two years, this bridge is one of the highlights of the city. It opened in 1853 and later went through renovations to specifically highlight its aesthetic dimensions. The deck of the bridge is made of wrought iron and is supported by girders suspended on heavy chains. The bridge is listed as significant for its historic and architectural value. In 2005, just before Radiance, Glasgow's Festival of Light, a campaign was conducted to illuminate the bridge to create a simmering reflection in the water at night. The bridge connects important buildings and streets in central Glasgow and is one of the iconic ways in which the city is depicted in visual culture.
A couple of drone views of the expanse of the bridge transition to a back shot following Badal walking across in slow motion. Bachchan’s star power as Badal is enhanced in this opening with the dramatic use of the bridge, a site that appears several times in the film. We have now been placed in Glasgow, but as stated earlier, other spaces around the city are also drawn into the narrative. Badal now walks through the city, and we see the neo-classical building that houses the gallery of modern art in the background. Badal looks back when he hears the gong of a clock, a smile on his face as he crosses the street to enter an apartment building. The city now appears more mundane and ordinary compared to the bridge. Badal goes up the elevator and rings the bell to the door that is opened by Naina. This apartment is supposedly located in Glasgow’s Cooperative building, known for its stunning apartments and commercial spaces.
During the flashback forays, we first encounter the exterior of the Overtoun house covered in snow during twilight. This well-known country house was built in 1862 and appears as the exterior of the Radisson hotel where Naina meets Arjun in a room where the latter is ultimately murdered. While the gardens and the Victorian architecture of the building are the highlights of this site, they are not visible because of the way it is shown drenched in snow. Obviously, the attractions of the gothic crime form are encoded in this desire to create a setting for the Radisson hotel through its exterior—a facade that is suggestive of a castle-like structure. Like gothic crime forms, we see events that are inexplicable and encounter fear, a sense of gloom, and psychological distress within a cold, atmospheric imagination.
Avik Mukhopadhay, the film's award-winning cinematographer, has stated that cinema is naturally drawn to darkness as spaces for mysterious events that can stretch our imagination. Badla maintains a melancholic timbre where lighting and camera movements are deployed to maintain a fine balance between blue/grey and yellow light. This atmospheric imagination is the aesthetic strategy used in the capture of the terrain. (https://www.digitalstudioindia.com/lists/4518-avik-mukhopadhyay)
The next visual foray takes us to the forest where the accident took place and the events that followed. A stranded Arjun, whose car is not working, is offered help by Rani and Nirmal, who were driving past. They invite him home while Nirmal repairs the car. It is during the drive to their house that Aviemore is first mentioned by Rani. Aviemore is a tourist resort town located three and a half hours by train from Glasgow. This site is repeatedly invoked as the place where the young man killed in the accident was living with his parents Rani and Nirmal. Aviemore is part of the Scottish Highlands and is located at the base of the Cairngorm Mountains. It is usually a busy place that is active throughout the year, offering snow skiing during the winter months and the pleasures of walking and cycling during the summer months. James Bond's No Time to Die (2021) was shot in Aviemore. In Badla, Aviemore train station is explicitly established, as is the train ride through the snowy region. Naina’s lover is a photographer, and his capture of the region’s natural beauty with a camera from a moving vehicle is intercut as photographic stillness combined with movement—a form perhaps intended to attract spectators to the visceral impact of the landscape on visitors.
As the narrative proceeds and the plot twists become more complicated, we move rapidly across different locations, some just introduced as inserts like the Radisson hotel and Hilton Garden exteriors, the Gateshead Millennium Bridge located in New Castle, and the corporate modern building where Naina works. These images are used more as impressions of a wider sense of the Scottish terrain than to maintain any locational coherence. One of the significant sites that we see in greater detail is the Chart Room Café that overlooks the Kip Marina, 40 minutes away from Glasgow. This is one of the locations where Naina and Arjun meet to figure out their strategy after the accident. Kip Marina provides excellent sailing conditions as well as a variety of on-site facilities for nearly 150 boats anchored along the shoreline. The Chartroom Café and Restaurant have a dazzling view of the boats and water.
While Badla depicts an extramarital affair as the catalyst for a series of events in a "who dun it?" plot, it consciously avoids any emotional exposition or focus on Naina's relationship with her husband Sunil (Shome Makhija) and lover Arjun. The focus instead is on the way the twists in the tale make their way through a selective map of Scotland. As a crime and detective film with an atmospheric imagination, Badla's use of space provides a sense of Scotland that is melancholic and grey, at once familiar and strange. In this narrative, physical and psychological terrains merge to reflect on personal ambition, crime, loss, and revenge.
Tourism
The use of certain iconic sites and the atmospheric imagination linked to crime literature and films were clearly meant to connect with a certain audience. Scotland is already a major tourist destination. Badla was released exactly one year before the pandemic, making it difficult to determine whether the film had any impact on tourism. Unlike films like Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011), which highlighted Spain’s sunny disposition and its adventure sports with a clear eye on tourism, the use of Scotland is mediated much more by a familiarity with films and literature dealing with the mood and melancholy context of crimes set in geographical territories with adverse weather conditions.
Additional Information & Links
Two British actors were part of the main cast–Antonio Aakeel who played the young man Sunny in the accident, and Tanveer Ghani who played the role of Sunny’s father, Nirmal. In using two British actors, the film mut have accrued additional points in the “culture test” required by the UK government to get additional rebates and concessions.
(https://www.digitalstudioindia.com/lists/4518-avik-mukhopadhyay)
