Xtreme Vogue Mumbai Desk: Komal Qureshi
Star Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Ahilya Bamroo, Pearle Dey, Jayant Kripalani, Johny Lever, Kristin Goddard
Director: Shoojit Sircar
What’s Good: A sturdy performance from Abhishek Bachchan and the core message
What’s Bad: The length and languid pacing
Loo Break: Depends on you!
Watch or Not?: “Story picture hai!” as the video library-walas used to say about offbeat films! So it’s up to you again.
Language: Hindi
Available On: Theatrical release
Runtime: 122 Minutes
User Rating:
Arjun Sen (Abhishek Bachchan) is one of those eloquent marketing whizzes who can, so to speak, sell hair oil to a bald man. An Indian who has come to the USA and done an MBA, he makes people believe that the pizza he sells is the only one worth eating! A divorcee, he has a brattish daughter, Reya (Perale Dey), who visits him on pre-arranged days.
And then, cancer strikes him out of the blue. He hides the truth from his daughter and sends her video messages whenever he is hospitalized and loses his job and home (though not his Cadillac!) But through all this, his biggest trauma is that he cannot talk as much as we would like to.
His doctor gives him 100 days to live, but the salesman lives on for decades. Through hospital visits and countless surgeries (the director informed me that the real Arjun Sen lost count after 20 of them!), he manages to talk and win against the disease.
Script Analysis
At face level, this is fundamentally a story of fighting the odds—major ones—that life throws at you. The fact that it is actually a biopic of his friend, Arjun Sen (though with “About 50 percent dramatization,” as director Shoojit Sircar informed me) makes the seemingly impossible and implausibly absurd saga believable only at the end because that is when viewers get to know and watch the real man who Abhishek Bachchan has portrayed!
In the first hour, the script is languid. Despite the real story, the film has an uneven grip on viewers. Until well past the intermission mark, we are under the impression that the film is an overtly absurd saga of a man who looks fit (complete with a paunch) enough to drive cars and live alone (any house help or cook is missing, and the man seems to thrive on junk food and—often—morose silences!).
He has scattered interactions with his doctors, and the only times these sequences come to life are in the beginning when Arjun is in denial and also in his attempted suicide sequence. The other saving graces are the intermittent scenes with his helper (Kristin Goddard), who motivates him to live on.
In the second half, things perk up a good bit. We now see a survivor who has established a rapport with his principal doctor (Jayant Kripalani) and shows a semblance of wryness with his now nubile daughter (Ahilya Bamroo) but has no other friend. The divorced wife is never shown, but now, after 20 surgeries, Arjun (who once humorously tells us why he was named after the Mahabharat hero!) is also in a kind of stubbornly victorious mode and opts to run a marathon (Vijay 69¸anyone?).
This last is his tribute to his helper, who, despite motivating him not to commit suicide, has ended her own life. Arjun also has (unwarranted and typically ‘Indian parent’ like) advice for his daughter. He also has heartfelt conversations with her and she becomes his pillar of strength as well.
Writer Ritesh Shah, whose oeuvre has spanned every kind of film, action thriller, and suspense drama, has penned a very different midstream movie that attempts to go where few films have before. But he falters in the pace, as such a film not only needed to be a shade brisker to involve the audience and also move past the seemingly unreal elements (which do not apply to everyone in Arjun’s condition) but also more even and intense in the emotional quotient.
A glaring error of judgment (even if it truly was the case in real life with Arjun and Reya) is their very ‘distant’ (to coin a term) relationship with each other. There are no frequent hugs or spontaneous displays of endearment (even when Reya is about eight or so), which, for me, is not something a viewer will relish. It is difficult to stomach that a man who can die anytime can be as unemotional as this to his only child.
More importantly, there is no ‘lump in the throat’ movement. For such a film that wants to attract audiences with its mix of humor and pathos, that is a definite flaw. Anand (1971) stands as a glaring example to compare here.
Star Performance
The film rests heavily on its protagonist, and Abhishek Bachchan delivers a rock-solid performance as the eccentric Arjun (in the final analysis). He is note-perfect at every stage for the role written for him and is at his best when he is nonplussed by his daughter at different stages and struggles to be convincing in his answers to her frank questions. His wryness when discussing his next surgery with his doctor is also very effective.
Ahilya Bamroo as Reya shines in an understated performance. Jayant Kripalani, as Dr. Deb, is alright. Johny Lever is wasted but cast against his usual grain. Pearle Dey is a perfect blend of innocent inquisitiveness and precociousness as the younger Reya.
Direction, Music
Shoojit Sircar did wonders with both the characters of the father and his daughter in a more pleasant milieu in his fictional Piku and could have scored better in his real-life drama. His deliberate slowness of pace might be alluring to ‘students’ of cinema who are enthralled by such viewer-unfriendly approaches under the ‘excuse’ of realism but will not hold water with those paying exorbitant admission rates for tickets who want value for money, not just with movies like Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 but also weightier ones like Shoojit’s own Vicky Donor and Piku itself.
I think this talented director should, one day, sit calmly and self-assess what made his successful films work despite their offbeat tenor, more critically, and vice versa.
There are only two nondescript songs in the film, and mercifully, the background score is minimalist.
The Last Word
The climactic revelation about the real Arjun Sen changes the complexion of the entire film, but I wish the too-long earlier portions had not tested your patience.
Three stars!
