DASVIDANIYA...

A year ago, who could have predicted that the year’s best film would be a First time director’s small budget-small star cast film on the morbid subject of impending Death? Lympho-Sarcoma of the intestine-anybody?
Did I hear the regular Hindi film audiences already running for cover from the doctor’s waiting room? Hasn’t superstar SRK dealt with it so smartly and glibly in Kal Ho Na Ho- a couple of years ago? But the deceptively named Dasvidaniya(goodbye in russian) is in a different league. Less than a quarter of this very Indian film is shot abroad. It has little to do with Indo-Russian platitudes. And there are no rivers of glycerine being shed around the hospital bed as the camera pans from the convulsing hero to the now staple cardiogram with a pulsating green saw toothed line.
Director Shashant Shah’s Dasvidaniya is on par with Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anand in terms of ingenuity of screenplay & dialogues (Arshad Syed), and sensitivity of approach to a subject that is depressing to say the least. (The only department its found wanting is the music). The strength of the movie lies in the protaganist’s (obvious) acceptance of his situation and the (remarkable) journey of fulfillment of his Bucket List. What are the ten things that YOU would do if you knew you’d die in three months? Learn to pay the guitar? Buy a new car? Travel abroad? Go find the girl you had loved all your life? For a film that rings the death-knell for its darpok protagonist within its first fifteen minutes, Dasvidaniya finishes on a note of upliftment that’s remarkable to say the least.
The double chinned, bespectacled, sadhna-cut Vinay Pathak excels as the shy, reticent and bland Accounts Manager who suddenly finds out that he’s about to kick the bucket in three months and decides to live out the rest of his life by fulfilling the wishes that he’d been too afraid to even admit to himself throughout his beleaguered 37 years of existence. Here’s an actor who’s choosing the right scripts to work on and is growing from strength to strength ( Bheja Fry, Manorama, Khosla Ka Ghosla, Jhonny Gaddar). In a dramatic turn around of sorts from his proven repertoire of mad-cap roles, Vinay Pathak’s character of Amar Kaul harks back to some of the Amol Palekar/ Vinod Mehra Ghar-Gharounda films of the70s or even the classic DD serials of yore like Mr. Yogi/Wagle ki Duniya that people still remember despite their so called ordinariness. Also worth a mention is Sarita Joshi as Kaul’s partially deaf and TV addicted mother who resurrects her limp/distracted existence to try and save her son as the film hurtles towards its predictable but undoubtedly memorable end.

In its simplicity, poignancy, courage and undeniable bitter-sweet charm, Dasvidaniya is almost the best Good bye ever.

WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR !

For Bollywood, there’s an India where faux-gay men shave their tanned chests, strut about on the beaches of Miami and declare that Indian cinema has 'arrived'-and then there’s Shyam Benegal’s India. Doubtless-his Welcome To Sajjanpur is a charming, winsome yet scathingly satirical film- its simple cause/consequence take on pathos and a rushed fifteen minutes wrap-up notwithstanding. The protagonist’s (a brilliant Shreyas Talpade) insistence in using an old fountain pen to write letters for a rupee each for all the illiterate villagers is a metaphor for the low-on-ambition and grossly under-represented ‘other’ India that continues to grapple with its hardships in the shadow of the media-blitz on the metros that defines the ‘modern India’ today.
Yes, this village where everyone talks in a borderline UP/Bihar accent is a microcosm for all the pleasures and pains that define life in an Indian village. WTS is the Mera Gaon=Mera Desh idea resuscitated from the seventies and presented in a farcical nautanki mode. The film is more character than plot driven and takes the viewer on a rare, lighthearted Malgudi Days like journey through an idyllic Sajjanpur as seen through the eyes (and pen) of it sutradhar- Shreyas Talpade. Everyone in the village needs him to be their spokesperson and he tries his best to keep maintain a sense of parity, balance and a sense of justice through the power of his carefully penned words and little else. There’s a forlorn bride (Amrita Rao) who pines for her estranged husband, an ambitious gunda (Yashpal Sharma) with electoral aspirations, a chat-pati, ‘dog’matic chachi (Ila Arun) who wants to marry off her cursed daughter (Divya Dutta) to a dog and of course the lovelorn village idiot (Bhojpuri star~Ravi Kishen). The characters ranging from a stingy snake charmer to a retired army man are all nothing new, but what makes the film so interesting is its sparkling screenplay and dialogues (Ashok Mishra). Under Benegal’s watchful eye, the characters are funny (in a rustic way) without being crude and loud without being distasteful. So there are no backless cholis on display and no laathi-dacait fights in the middle of the day. In its dignity and poise, WTS is truly captivating.
The film touches upon issues as wide as widow re-marriage, gender roles (Hijra-Sarpanch), wretched superstitions, communal harmony and even thwarted efforts at industrial development (for proposed car-plants). In doing so Benegal conjures up too many characters that use up about three-quarters of the film’s running time in their mere introduction and leave no scope for a satisfactory Third Act finale. Despite all that and the absence of any star-power, Welcome To Sajjanpur is well worth a visit. It’s a small but ambitious and energetic entertainer that showcases the vision of an auteur to a mainstream audience and proves the power of the pen in more ways than one.

OYE LUCKY! LUCKY OYE!

Once in while, sometimes, almost out of some unexpected roll of dice or a divine sleight of hand that dictates the fate of all 'creative' endeavours in Bollywood; comes a small, precocious film that gets everything right and like its protagonist wins everyone over, despite its modest star cast, lack of a memorable original soundtrack and a screeplay thats heavily peppered with a nasal panju-jat accent.
Like S Raghavan's Johnny Gaddar, you know Oye Lucky Lucky Oye is special from the moment its Truck-Body-Kitsch-Art casting starts rolling to the tune of Kishore Kumar's~'Chahiye-thora pyaar-thora pyar chahiye.' The film is a studied overstatement (!) of the aspirations of a typical Dilli lower-middle-class chor like no film before it. And its done with humour, panache and amazing attention to details from start to end~ right from the title which exemplifies the Punjabi way of addressal to its intelligent use of rank newcomers to make the protagonist's audaciously long run from the clutches of the law believable. And no, there are no derisive, stereotypical references to-' Barah baj gaye' type Sardar jokes or Karan Johar types glycerine/ glitterati shaadi tamashas where everyone on screen is gauche personified. Here; the sets look real, the characters flesh and blood and the general energy level and garish colours adopted by the director are as different from KHOSLA KA GHOSLA as the awkward Parvin Dabas was from smooth operator Abhay Deol.
Abhay Deol as the rather sweet, suave but remorseless cut-surd turned compulsive chor with nerves of steel is a joy to watch. He's making mental inventories of 'lift-able' commodities into any house that he walks into. Jewellery, clothes, music systems, TVs, anything will do. Even pet Pomeranians. He's forever looking for a quick gasp at everything that's rich, luxurious and just out of reach~ though he doesn't have a house to keep his stolen booty in. He lives in a car and is perpetually on the run. And he will go as far as his stars take him before his he runs out of luck. Total entertainment to the tune of 30 lakhs worth of good stolen, as per the state Police records.
The film begins with fifteen minutes from the life of a teenaged (& turbaned) Lucky as a precursor to his adult life of 'hi-fi ambition.' From there, there's no slowing down as Lucky steals cars, hearts, almost entire shop-marts. Where OLLO triumphs over regular chor-police romps is also in capturing the strain/changes that come into Lucky's relationship with his lady love (Neetu Chandra), brilliant side-kick (Manu Rishi), father( Paresh Rawal), chief mentor (Paresh Rawal) and a Vet (Paresh Rawal again!).
The overall plot is admittedly nothing to write home about but the hilarious screenplay, dialogues and character sketches score highly without falling into the trappings of ho-hum mainstream-masala movies. In this reality-bite of Dilli ka alu-paratha, entire families live their lives in small, stuffy and unplastered houses, scooters are still the only family vehicle, irate parents still throw pilate-glass at bigade-hue bacchas and the girl next door still looks like the coy girl next door, sans attitude, make-up and parlour hair-do.
Dibakar Banerjee's sophomore venture is one of best entertainers of the year. No question about it, oye!