02 Jul 09

11

Review - Laaga Chunari Mein Daag: Highly unconvincing!

So, it is a Yash Raj movie. You have learnt to forgive them for the extra tinge of orange and the sharp sounds, the mandatory songs and the unnecessary melodrama. But, if throughout the movie, the one question that nags you is, "Could a real person, seriously react this way to this situation?" then what exactly are you expected to enjoy?

We are talking of a movie that claims to be about the 'journey of a woman'. I refuse to believe that it was supposed to be in the leave-your-brain-home-and-don't-ask-too-many-questions genre. What could have been a celebration of the spirit of a woman, turns into another story of a woman finding ultimate happiness only in meeting an ideal man. It is uncanny how a salute to womanhood ends in men being the goal of their lives. Not to mention that men are shown as a breed who crave sex. So desperate are they that they pay huge sums to have sex with the most remorseful, uninterested women.

Let alone the societal issues, the treatment given to the story was also half-hearted. The details were missing. Elements that needed build-up happened suddenly. The outcome of things that were built-up over the movie was resolved within 30 seconds of screen time.

The only redeeming factors were the performances by the two leading ladies - Rani Mukherjee and Konkona Sen Sharma. We have seen both these women do a wide variety of roles, and these particular ones don't stand out from within the standards they have set for themselves. But, that they managed to jerk tears without adequate support from the script or the dialogues is praiseworthy.

The dialogues, especially towards the end were so clichéd that it was outright ridiculous. There was this one pause that Abhishek Bachchan takes mid-sentence. You could sense a huge portion of the audience admire their dialogue-predicting capabilities, when he finishes his line. The dialogues were excessive in a couple scenes given to Konkana. I think, left to her own devices, Konkana could have expressed much more with her silences.

On the other hand, I was bowled over by the lyrics of the songs. Especially, "nistabdh khadi hu mein" and "Kachi kaliyaa". The music was refreshing because it was different. Now, whether or not the songs deserved time of their own on the screen is a different question altogether.

The camerawork was average. No in-the-face camera or annoying movements except for a few scenes here and there. In fact, there were a couple of very well-done scenes depicting the emotional state of the character. Unfortunately, they did not go with the rest of the film because the technique did not continue in the rest of the movie.

What amused me was the huge compliment the cameraperson paid to Abhishek Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee in the song that was supposedly shot in Switzerland. Just imagine, they had all the scenic beauty in the world to capture and they focused mainly on close to mid-shots of the two-some. Or did they do that to avoid being criticized of favoring the Alps too much? Or could it be because it was not Switzerland at all? The rainbow shot towards the end of the song looked like use of blue screen. If it wasn't, then that's a bigger shame, isn't it? Imagine all that money spent and the effect is that of a blue screen.

Better defined characters and even better defined motivations would have taken this overall interesting plot a long way. But, alas, that is a lot to ask for.

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