The Hindu : New Delhi News : A show for the sensitive heart Cinema

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Sunday, Dec 09, 2007
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A show for the sensitive heart Cinema

ZIYA US SALAM

A WEEKEND OF NOSTALGIA: Sudhir Mishra’s “Khoya Khoya Chand” is soaked in the colours of yesterday.

KHOYA KHOYA CHAND

(At Spice PVR, Noida and other theatres in Delhi and elsewhere)

Ask ye an eternal romantic how is the love story? Might as well ask the world how is the moon glow! Soft. Soothing. Or maybe radiant too. That is Sudhir Mishra’s “Khoya Khoya Chand”, a film that offers absolutely nothing by way of box office gratification but pleases the aesthete in us all. A film that assuages the lover in the man, and the vanity in the women. So beautiful, so delectable, it is art-house cinema at its aesthetic best. Too sad the commerci al circuit does not respect art. Often a prisoner of a craft that is debauched, it has its own reasons. Just as the heart has its own compulsions.

Here, though, Mishra’s heart is in the right place. He has made a film that moves ever so gently. Yet when the final credits roll, you don’t realise you have been watching this period saga for a couple of hours. Almost like the dew, fresh but fleeting. Mishra’s film is a splendid showcase for colours that are neither muted nor riotous. Just a soothing mixture of the bright and the sober to complement the mood of the film that is a throwback to the times when the film industry was known for its sharks. Men who “befriended” women, men who chased a muse and found a companion, men who longed for love but often mistook lust for love! And women who had to run the family with their earnings, take care of an old father who cared for no tomorrow, a brother who loved nothing more than the jingle of cash. It is the story of one such man, a poet-writer – played with dexterous ease by young Shiney Ahuja – who wants to make his mark in filmdom. Soon enough he meets a heroine – Soha Ali Khan in the first author-backed role of a promising career – looking for a protective shadow of a responsible man even as she meets many of the seamier kind. Throw in a third angle – Rajat Kapoor as a top hero, for whom girls shed inhibitions and everything else – and Mishra’s time-tested triangle is complete. Two guys, one successful and ambitious, the other talented and aspiring, and a girl, bewitching and beautiful, but not untouched by the times! Shades of Guru Dutt’s saga, some murmur. A dash of Meena Kumari’s life? Or is it Waheeda Rehman? Let the arguments go on. In truth, Mishra has simply borrowed chunks of life from the sagas of many yesteryear stars for this story that has pathos as its second name.

There is more than an allusion to the casting couch, yet the overriding feeling is not one of debauchery but melancholy. We feel sad at the helplessness of the heroine past her prime, lost and lonely. We feel for the writer, looking for that one shot at lasting fame.

Yet after all these moments are put together, the thing that stays with the viewers is one of gentle joy. The colours of the frames, the soothing background music, the costumes of the actors, and the complete absence of melodrama. Go for “Khoya Khoya Chand” with a sensitive heart. Looking for masala fare? Stay away.

DUS KAHANIYAAN

(At Chanakya, PVR Saket and other theatres)

The brave new Bollywood continues to make half stabs at experimentation. After the box office disaster of “Darna Mana Hai” and “Darna Zaroori Hai”, not to forget “Salam-e-Ishq”, comes this film. Half a dozen directors, half a score screenplay writers, more than a handful of dialogue writers. And a film that talks of ten stories without one linking element.

At its base, it is almost like those good old television serials of the 1980s when you watched one episode of “Ek Kahani” or “Katha Sagar” and then another the following week. No common linkage between the two. It is the same here in this film directed by Sanjay Gupta, Rohit Roy, Meghna Gulzar and Hansal Mehta among others.

Some of the stories hold interest. Like the one involving old pros Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah, she a Tamil Brahmin woman who cannot brook the touch of a Muslim, he is a cap-wearing Muslim whose offer of a polite helping hand is rejected. There is a little message: in the end, we are all human beings. Then there is Nana Patekar’s somewhat predictable but likeable seasoned lover who carries balloons for his wife! And Amrita Singh as the wrong-doing Punjabi woman.

Separately these episodes hold interest. But what follows in between is real tedium: difficult to understand what the likes of Anooradha Patel, Neha Dhupia, Arbaaz Khan, Dino Morea and even Sanjay Dutt and Suniel Shetty are doing? Sleepwalking? Or merely bringing up the numbers?

As an idea, “Dus Kahaniyaan” clicks. But it is an idea whose time apparently has not come yet. And it won’t unless the directors present a better fare, a film that is consistently engrossing, a film that has better dialogue, better music. Sorry, but “Dus Kahaniyaan” fails to pass the muster.

ROGUE ASSASSIN

(At Spice PVR, Noida and Delhi theatres)

It is one of those dumped and forgotten films that make an appearance only for the die-hard. Here Jet Li admirers are expected to support a perfectly mediocre film that fails to rise above its routine fare. Keeping Li company is John Statham, a no mean man when it comes to handling machines and punches. So you would expect a film dripping with action, high on guts and glory? Might as well scale down the expectations considerably because here director Phillip Atwell plays i t safe. Too safe. The action comes in a little spoonful. It is the story of an FBI agent – Statham in familiar territory – whose partner has been bumped off. Who has done it? Li. Who else? As the guys take on each other in a series of revenge bids, you don’t need a degree in astrology to read Atwell’s mind. The viewers are almost invariably ahead of the director. Result? A disaster of a film where the lead actors get into their own only at the end.

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