FILM: Hawaizaada
Cast: Mithun Chakraborty, Ayushmann Khurrana, Pallavi Sharda, Naman Jain, Jayant Kriplani…
DIRECTOR: Vibhu Virender Puri
Do you ever wonder what it would be like to fly? Then see Hawaizaada, a film that soars into the skies with its overweening ambitions and miraculously manages to stay airborne as it chronicles the life a man who wanted to fly.
Debutant director Vibhu Puri’s very accomplished film, a tribute to the scientist who apparently manned the first aircraft that civilizations has ever flown, is a stunning feast of visual splendour, compounded with a script that’s tightly and judiciously written to accentuate the audacity and eccentricity of people who can float in the future.
Straightaway it can be said with great pride that Vibhu Puri’s debut is a homage to the art and visual aesthetics of Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Every frame is reminiscent of several Bhansali creations, notably “Devdas” and “Saawariya”, the former for the theme of unfulfilled love (with Khurana’s capricious love interest Pallavi Sharda forming a fusion of Paro and Chandramukhi’s two-layered character from Devdas) and the latter for the rich bold use of flamboyant colours to highlight the heightened opera-styled emotions.
“Hawaizaada” attempts an almost-impossible marriage of a visual splendour with emotional surrender. The characters, be it the whimsical aimless Shivkar Talpade or his kooky mentor Shastry , or the Britishers who scowl at any attempt by Shastry and Talpade to create inventional history….these are people who don’t believe in holding back emotions. When they feel show. Period.
The year is 1895. The possibilities of recreating that era in present times seems far-fetched and unlikely. Thanks to Puri’s art directors(Subrata Chakraborty0, Amit Ray), music composers(Vishal Bhardwaj pitches in with a zestful lavni filmed on the gorgeous Sharda) and most specially his incredibly gifted camera-person Savita Singh(who happens to be Puri’s wife), the director has constructed a world as unthinkable on paper as the theory of flying a plane must have seemed to Talpade’s contemporaries.
Thank God for the dreamers,back then and now.
“Hawaizaada” is a film with tempestuous ambitions. Co-writers Vibhu Puri and Saurabh R Bhave use Talpade’s dream of flying as a metaphor for anyone from any era who has dreamt of breaking free. The pronounced but Amuted metaphor is extended into Talpade’s extend family of repressed character, again very Devdas-like in its operatic structure. There is the growling father(Jayant Kripalani), tightlipped mother(Natasha Sinha), smirking brother(Mehul Kajaria), dominated bhabhi(Priyanka Sethia)….They all long to ,well, fly .
Encircling this wide arc of wannabe fliers who are piloted into the epic plot by Talpade’s navigational dreams, couldn’t be an easy task. Vibhu Puri manages the seemingly impossible maneuvering skilfully joyously and playfully through lives in an era when oppression was a pre-condition.
Soaring on a dream, “Hawaizaada” transports us into an enchanting world of a dream-reality where anything can happen. Birds can sing, humanbeing can fly….whatever! Fuelling the impossible dream is the central performance by Ayushmann Khurrana. He breathes animated life into Shivkar Bapuji Talpade, the audacious 19th century scientist who dared to fly. Khurrana plays Talpade as a trippy dreamer, a Devdas drunk on his dreams.
Mithun Chakraborty as Talpade’s mentor is goofy eccentric and endearing. This is the actor’s most effective performance in years. As for Pallavi Sharda, though admittedly that well-toned gym-produced physique doesn’t jell with the film’s periodicity, she is a revelation doing an amalgamation of Paro and Chandramukhi from Devdas.Besharam is forgotten and forgiven.
Going back in time is never an easy task in cinema. Many have failed to court periodicity convincingly. “Hawaizaada” gets away with its flight into the mind of the man who dared to fly. This miniature masterpiece leaves us exhilarated and exultant. Thank God for the dreamers, past and present.
Thank you, Shivkar Bapuji Talpade. Thank you, Vibhu Puri. (IANS)
FILM: Rahasya
Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Tisca Chopra, Ashish Vidyarthi, Ashwini Kalsekar and Mita Vashisht
DIRECTOR: Manish Gupta
Half of the star-rating extra for the sheer abundance of acting talent that Manish Gupta’s stylish confidently-shot whodunit throws forward, with Kay Kay Menon helming the murder mystery as an walnut-chomping CBI officer on the trail of the murder of a young girl, who is killed in her swanky home while her doctor-father was drunk in the next room.
No no no…don’t go away! This is not the tragic Arushi Talwar murder revisited and sensationalised on celluloid. Director Manish Gupta, who has earlier made a strong but crude film on ragging, “Hostel”, keeps the proceedings on an even keel. Taking the Talwar tragedy as a take-off point, writer-director Gupta has woven an intricate whodunit with enough twists and turns to keep us guessing about the murderer’s identity till the very end.
The killer’s identity, when revealed, is not entirely unexpected but nonetheless shocking and more importantly, convincing.
Whodunits in Bollywood frequently flounder in their end-game. Not “Rahasya”. Gupta keeps the narrative going in a steady flow and at a perky pace. The shots are cut deftly. Editor Suresh Pai gives the wide array of characters ample room to breathe but never allows them to overstay their welcome. This suspense here largely depends on the efficacy of the actors. And here’s where “Rahasya” really scores. Kay Kay Menon as the wry investigative officer fighting off his wife’s persistent demands to get corrupt, brings a tremendous engagingess to his character. His character Sunil Paraskar is a man who survives the hardships of a thankless job by cracking cruel jokes about himself and others. There is a sequence where a character subtly tries to offer monetary gratification to Paraskar. “You aren’t trying to bribe me by any chance are you,” Kay Kay’s eyebrows arch menacingly. When the temptation is hurriedly pulled back, he growls: “Ah, a miscommunication.”
Such moments of delectable humour should have been present more frequently. Largely, “Rahasya” opts for an exaggerated ambience, mood and treatment. The background music by Ranjit Barot is excellently subdued, more suggestive than illustrative. But the actors’ voices are over-dubbed and over-punctuated.
Particularly grating on the nervous system is that wonderful actress Ashwini Kalsekar, who as the dead girl’s nanny, whines, sobs, moans and wails almost throughout the film.
We almost wish for one more murder to happen.
But the actors nonetheless save the day. Besides Kay Kay, who is spectacularly subtle, Tisca Chopra as the dead girl’s mother and a new actor Nimai Bali as a corruptible cop, emerge triumphant. Mita Vashisht as a smouldering mysterious television actress in backless cholis attempts to be what was once described as the femme fatale. Given her choice of lover for the film, Ms Vashisht ends up as all smoke with no fire. Admirably, the director shoots Mumbai’s underbelly — the chawls, narrow lanes, toilets and local trains — with great affection. Faroukh Mistry’s camera roams the city restlessly. The long shots of the city waking from uneasy slumber every morning merge into the microscopic view of the traumatised family.
This is a dark, desperate, sinister, gutsy and gripping thriller which may not tilt you to the edge of the seat. But you do want to know who killed the teenaged girl Ayesha Mahajan. The answer won’t please you for sure. Messy lives, sordid relationships, betrayal and revenge run through the veins of the film. Barbara Cartland would have frowned. But Agatha Christie would have assuredly approved. (IANS)