TOI Review -
YOU'VE seen the technicolour '70s in Bollywood, just a few weeks ago, in Farha Khan's Om Shanti Om . Time to go back another decade or so in a sepia-tinted time machine which takes you to the more angst-ridden '50s and the getting-happy '60s.
This time, director Sudhir Mishra opts for a more serious tone - compared to Farha's rumbustious humour. This is one befitting the era he tries to re-capture on celluloid: the age of Guru Dutt, Sahir, Madhubala, Waheeda and Raj Kapoor, when both reel and real life unspooled behind a smoke-screen.
Ironically, those were the more liberal years when screen goddesses were irreverent towards traditional morality and lived life on their own terms. Hence the importance of a character like Sudhir Mishra's unconventional '50s-'60s diva who lived and loved and lost, all on her own terms.
So far so good. Mishra, who gave us the memorable document on the '70s student movement , Hazaron Khawhishen Aisi , begins on the right note.
The film opens in the haze of the film studios of the 1950s when Nikhat, a struggling, exploited dancer (Soha Ali) dreams of breaking into the limelight as an actress of import.
She is spotted preening in the background by the superstar, Prem Kumar (Rajat Kapoor) who takes no time to replace the reigning queen (Sonya Jehan) with this young, talented, mercurial waif who walks into his life with equal ease, only to end up as his heartbroken mistress.
The tragedy-struck girl is rescued by and upcoming writer, Zafar (Shiney Ahuja) who has his own demons - a troubled relationship with his father - to chase. And so you end up with two star-crossed lovers who are hell-bent on destroying themselves, and each other, simply because life has never been easy for them.
The background is perfect, the cinematography is arresting, the music (Shatanu Moitra) has a glorious retro tone and the performances (Soha, Rajat, Shiney, Vinay Pathak) are riveting. But the narrative keeps dipping and dipping, leaving the film to hang on as a mere string of montages, rather than a gripping story that transcends its characters. Here, the paper-thin story, ironically lets down the characters too.
And the loosely-edited second half leaves you fidgeting in your seat, ever so often. Somehow, the director has failed to create the magnificent passion that makes a relationship extraordinary...something that may have matched up to the underlying myth of Guru Dutt's ardour for his leading lady or Madhubala's dare-devil defiance to life and death.
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