Good Guy Bad Guy is a documentation of a young man’s negotiation with the teeming metropolis of modern day Bengaluru. Rendered with extraordinary humanity and integrity, the film’s strong, vivid energy layers the story of the untameable yet somehow sweet and fragile Zakhir, a runaway who makes his living as a rag picker.

 

The film opens directly with a search for the missing Zakhir.

 

Zakhir has caught the imagination of Indu Krishnan, a film-maker scouring the city in quest of a film. She is determined that she will use frequent visits to her family home and city to create a cinematic document. Walking in Cubbon Park, a green space that retains a flavour of the place she grew up in, Indu encounters Zakhir feeding the feral monkeys of the park with a touching tenderness. It is not right to cage animals, he says at one point. When the young man disappears, she searches for him. The search is driven not just by concern, but also by a self-stated desire to finish the film. This honesty of approach is evident throughout the document, both in the visual and in the narrative, lifting it from Herzogian voyeurism to a vibrant engagement with humanity.

 

In the course of their many conversations, Indu discovers that Zakhir wants to make his own blockbuster about a demon-slaying foster mother of orphans. The camera follows Indu and Zakhir through the mad colour and bizarre social schisms of the city as they participate in each other’s film-making dreams. Ultimately, the film explores the wild underground life of the city and the nature of the runaway through the gentle, expressive, and ever-hopeful spirit of Zakhir.

 - Indira Chandrasekhar, author, Polymorphism, HarperCollins Publishers India, 2017

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