Packs a solid punch

In case you are looking out for an assembly of talented performers living up to their repute, your search could end here. If ever the length of a film is its undoing it is this. Here is an example of laboured raunchy humour laced alongside some delicate poetry on love. For all the above, here is the one stop shop. It is a world filled with people adorning masks. Good is not a fashion here, evil is. To state the obvious: our cinema, and in keeping with the times does no longer flourish in telling the tale of the conflict between good and evil, where good is the final victor. Here it is about the different shades of grey: The naïve Vs the shrewd.

Khalu Jaan (Naseeruddin Shah) and Babban (Arshad Warsi) have just robbed a precious piece of antique jewellery smuggled into the country from across the border when the two part: Khallu with the necklace and Babban with disappointment. Shorn of the connective details the twosome meet this time at the ruinous palace of Begum Para who on widowhood has the testament of her late husband to marry again- but this time a poet. It is this propagandist search that brings in many suitors including Jaan Mohammad Khan (Vijay Raaz) and Khalu Jaan. In the huge mansion, giving the aging Begum company is Muniara Aslam (Huma Qureshi). The best poet is going to win the lady, the heiress of the palace in decay. Who is feigning, who real? Who is in love and who is just faking is the intrigue that makes for the plot . Interesting take.

Vishal Bharadwaj gives you some interesting music, fairly different from the early ‘Maachis’ which I think was surely more haunting. The cinematography by Sethu is also worth a special mention. However, one would believe that the film is marginally let down by a screenplay (Vishal Bharadwaj and Abhishek Chaubey) that lingers and takes you through long spells of waning focus. At the one level, like most films, this too perhaps belongs to the director. Abhishek Chaubey is not making the usually linear film. The characters are complex in that they bring their natural grey to the table and push it with reasonable conviction. The fact that he brings in one too many may be morally irksome but that is not the concern of the artiste. He is telling his story and the characters as perceived in a tale that reflects a formidable scenario of depleting accountability. Interestingly like in ‘Ishqiya’, it is not about any moral quandary, it is about how the script unties itself. Helping him in the task apart from the factor of contemporary acceptability is the conviction of the stars and the quality they bring to the characters they portray. Take Vijay Raaz for instance – the actor who hardly has been given a role of substance till date.

He manufactures a performance that makes you take him seriously every time he appears in the script and leaves you yearning for more. Even Manoj Pahwal in a role that hardly has meat gives it the flesh it requires. Huma Qureshi has a very unenviable task on hand: stand up to the gorgeous and extremely magnetic Madhuri Dixit. She is up to the task and makes her screen presence felt. No mean task this. Madhuri Dixit: ethereal, stunning, regal, graceful, powerful and above all endearing. Nice to see a meaty role come to a 40 plus actress and even nicer seeing Madhuri translate it with such aplomb. However, one gets the lurking feel that the glamour quotient gets the better of the soul in the character – what a Meena Kumari would have done to the role (remember ‘Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam’).

Naseeruddin Shah certifies every character he plays. Ditto here. Amazing understanding of the craft. Picture perfect. Perfect picture any which way you see it- he delivers yet another memorable performance. Some where the film belongs to Arshad Warsi for two reasons: his performance matches Naseer and the character even impish in a bad bad world. He carries it with such brilliance that you have your love overtake acceptable moral stances to wish him the best in his screen endeavours. To quote from Camus it is his character that seems to suggest: “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

‘Dedh Ishqiya’ for all its wonderful labour could have been a better film, if some rough edges were worked upon. A trimmer tale would surely have been more engrossing.

Abhishek Chaubey’s men are not a mixture of the bad guys and the good guys. Each is a mix of being bad and good. They are human culled into the script. Interestingly so are his women. What makes the film very interesting is what Marcel Proust said: As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science (replace with creativity) can never regress. It is here that Abhishek scores.