With a touch of realism -- Traffic Signal
Traffic Signal
Genre: Drama
Director: Madhur Bhandarkar
Cast: Kunal Khemu, Neetu Chandra, Ranveer Shorey, Konkona Sensharma, Sudhir Mishra
Storyline: About the people who frequent a busy traffic signal in Mumbai
Bottomline: Skilful cinema, if not wholly entertaining
Considering that Madhur Bhandarkar's latest film is a bundle of stories, with an unruly mob of protagonists, you have to be impressed with the way it all comes together. Bhandarkar continues with his realistic cinema trend that we first saw in `Chandni Bar' and then in `Page 3,' and his affinity for hard-hitting journalistic style. Yes, there is nudity, poverty, prostitutes, in-your-face crassness and everything else you find in Bhandarkar films. What `Traffic Signal' lacks is a solid story, but this too fits the genre.
The film is intended to give the audience a glimpse of the machinery that drives the industry at the traffic signals, and that is precisely what it does.
Endearing characters
You have a parade of endearing characters, especially children. Tsunami from Tamil Nadu resolutely saves up money so he can call long distance to locate his parents who were lost during the tsunami, while another little fellow uses his earnings to buy a fairness cream that promises to make him look like the women on the billboards. Silsila (Kunal Khemu), named so as "he was born on the same day the Yash Chopra movie was released," is the anchor of the various lives adrift at the traffic signal. He manages a convincing show.
There are the stereotypically corrupt politicians who snigger and connive in their offices, but the film isn't really about them anyway. It's about the passers-by, the faces peddling magazines at your car window, and the ones you see squabbling in the backseats of other vehicles.
The traffic signal itself is unrecognisable, probably because most of the film was shot in a studio in Karjat.
Except for some patchy make-up on the actors, most of them deliver the goods.
SUSAN MUTHALALY
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