The Hindu : New Delhi News : Roy rekindles love while Ramu disappoints again Cinema

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Sunday, Sep 09, 2007
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New Delhi

Roy rekindles love while Ramu disappoints again Cinema

Ziya us Salam

MIXED FARE: Images from the three new releases of this week, Apna Asmaan, Dhamaal and Darling.

APNA ASMAAN

(PVR Saket and other theatres in Delhi and elsewhere)

In this age of plastic, it is time to rekindle your love, see that spark again in the eyes of the beloved, rediscover the bounce in your step and lift the apple of your eyes in your arms again. Life is a paradise, and it is time to capture your piece of the sky, your Apna Asmaan. Here is a film so beautiful, at a pace so languid that you wish dew were not so fleeting.

No unending sermons, nothing mushy, just a piece of gently changing cinema. Some hues are real, others close to that. Realism is no synonym of boring here.

Yes, debutant Kaushik Roy’s film, inspired by a real life incident, has some of the truest colours of life — most of them bright and beautiful, others sad and true.

After all, life is not always a song of joy. Relating the story of the parents of an autistic child, it talks of human inadequacies, of parents driving their kids to higher levels of accomplishment without realising that not every child is a genius.

The contentment comes from an acceptance of their limitations, not the absence of limitations. Here the parents even take recourse to a wonder drug to enhance their son’s development, only to realise their folly shortly afterwards.

Roy has his basics right. He keeps the pace reasonable. His cinematographer is on the ball and the story is narrated in a dispassionate manner.

Roy ropes in Shobana and Irrfan to play the parents of the autistic child. Both of them are in fine fettle. Again he plays it smart by giving Shobana most of the lines in English, keeping her Hindi lines to a minimum.

What’s more, she plays a dancer who has had to give up her career for the sake of her child. Then there is a fine juggling of commercials that makes a case for product inclusion without hampering the flow of events.

And when it comes to Irrfan, the best lines come easily to him as the director equates the enduring value of plastic with the abiding values of a human relationship.

And little Dhruv is plausible as a child with special abilities.

After a hard day’s work, Roy’s cinema is soothing. The joy comes at night!

DHAMAAL

(At Shiela and other Delhi theatres)

Full marks to director Indra Kumar for honesty: he makes absolutely no pretensions to sobriety, none whatsoever to even a semblance of seriousness. Boy! Does he do his business fine! His “Dhamaal” has a storyline thin as a thread yet he goes on and on for more than a couple of hours. What’s more, in many bright patches he delivers. The film, as it turns out, is a series of gags: not much more than a clever interweaving of some comic sequences, many of whi ch tickle. Of course, there is street humour, there is toilet humour, there is the soft spot humour. None, of course, is clean. Well, none is meant to be. He wants to tickle only some people, and tickle them only at some places.

Kumar knows the market he is catering to. And he goes about pleasing his chunk of cinemagoers without any apologies to the puritans. Let the moral brigade shout itself hoarse, let the critics rant, but Kumar knows only one way of filmmaking: and he stays consistent on that path.

“Dhamaal” is the story – if one can call it that – of four no-hopers: Arshad Warsi, Riteish Deshmukh, Jaaved Jaaferi and Aashish Chowdhury. The guys have no means of income, no employment. They are both unemployed and unemployable. And since it is meant to be a commercial film for a section of the audience that does not ask even the most basic of questions, the guys dress up trendily, wearing the choicest of labels. They do not have bread to eat but a pizza to share. They have no money to buy a bus ticket but enough skill to fly a private jet. You see what one meant by asking no questions!

In between all this the four run after a sum of Rs.10 crore which some rich businessman – played from memory by Prem Chopra – had left behind in some church in Goa. But hold on, there is another angle to the foursome. There is Sanjay Dutt as a wooden cop who has been after the booty for ten years too!

Throw in some side characters haggling over the spoils and you are faintly reminded of Priyadarshan’s “Malamaal Weekly” where the villagers had to split the riches.Does the film work? Well, in fits and starts. The masses lap up most of the jokes. Where Indra Kumar errs is in keeping his heavy artillery, Dutt, under wraps for a long time, then taking him out with as much care as a festive collection. Dutt, though, does nothing to prove he deserved better.

Even as the director ignores Dutt’s ability to carry a film on his shoulders, he gives a long rope to his side guns, the four pranksters. And of them only Jaaferi with his half-mouthed lines rises above mediocrity.

Cutting a long story short, is the film worth a visit? Sorry guys, no matter how much one hates to say so, it is the sort of film you watch and forget. Not a film that stays with you one hour after the show nor one where you curse the director even three hours after it all ends. No kamaal, really!

DARLING

(At Spice PVR, Noida; and other theatres)

In the run-up to the release of this Ramgopal Varma offering, its hero Fardeen Khan was quoted as saying that “Darling demanded all that I know of acting”. That, frankly, isn’t saying much considering how limited an actor Khan is. But here he is better than the film. That simply means that the film is pathetic. And Ramgopal Varma, who last week failed to get off the mark with his much talked about “Aag”, again delivers a blob.

In cricketing terms, he has got a pair, two successive zeroes at the box office. He seems to be making films from memory. And his memory in turn is acting like a sieve. Here he partly recycles his own “Bhoot”, adds his trademark eerie background music, low camera angles, stilted frames, dark hues. Now throw in some stylised romance and sex, and you have a film ready! Except that it is a half-baked romance: we have Fardeen Khan as a man married to Isha Koppikar and Esha Deol plays the girl longing to be a part of his life but is now just a ghost! Tormenting, teasing the guy and all that goes for apparitions in Bollywood parlance, she wears white; well, whatever little she does. And haunts the man. Khan makes faces, Esha twitches her eyebrows. The viewers wince.

Darling is good to begin with. The good part ends before one settles in the chair. Then it is one relentless drag. Hey, Mr. Varma, why do you insist on leaving your magic wand behind? Why on earth should a man so talented leave behind his skills too? Here you are like a king with no clothes. And the film is a poor, very poor, advertisement for a sleight gone terribly awry.

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