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Karnataka

Karnataka

This one exposes the media’s shallowness

— Photo: PTI

Soha Ali Khan

Film: Mumbai Meri Jaan (Hindi)

Cast: Soha Ali Khan, Madhavan, Paresh Rawal

Director: Nishikant Kamat

Mumbai may not need any brownie points from chroniclers or posterity but that does not dissuade our filmmakers from dishing out a few anyway. Right from the time S.H. Bihari penned “Ae dil hai mushkil…”, filmmakers have been mesmerised by Bambai nagariya, talking of sone chandi ki nagariya!

Director Nishikant Kamat comes up with a more topical essay on the city that has been at the receiving end of many terrorist acts in recent times.

He too sings about the undying spirit of Mumbaikars at the end. But it is in the journey that he scores almost all the points.

At one time, he takes the lid off the charge of terrorism with which all Muslims are often sullied for the acts of a handful.

In a sad irony, the religion of peace — Islam — is wrongly equated with deeds of violence. Kamat does not launch into a sermon.

Rather, through little pot-shots taken by Kay Kay Menon’s character, he exposes the persecution, the ignominy many Muslims have to face in every day life. Quietly, he also exposes the fallacy of a sweeping generalisation.

Through the character of Soha Ali Khan, who plays a professional but initially heartless journalist — she asks a woman who has just lost her husband, “how do you feel” for a sound byte — he exposes the shallowness of our media. Intrusive, insensitive, avoidable.

Similarly, the ageing cop Paresh Rawal’s silently embittered state reveals the guilty conscience of the law protectors. Similarly, he focusses quietly on the unequal distribution of the fruit of development through Irrfan’s roadside vendor’s character: he can enter a mall but can only afford some window shopping.

Then there is Madhavan’s utterly under utilised patriotic Indian who believes every drop matters in an ocean. Never mind that a cloud might just follow the silver-lining. He had barely escaped death — he was on the train when the blasts took place — but refuses to believe that all is lost for India or Indians.

It is a feeling that will be shared by almost a billion people.

That Kamat airs it with dignity and restraint enriches his film that is a montage of disparate elements. Unfortunately, the film works only in fits and starts.

Good frames, nice ideas. Individually, almost every story has a feel. Together they lack a soul, the sutradhar is not quite strong enough. More like a five-part TV serial than a feature film.

Set against the train blasts of 7/11, the film talks of five principal characters affected by the blasts that took more than 200 lives. It is a non-linear approach our filmmakers have taken to ever since Alejandro Gonzalez so beautifully proved its merit in “Babel”.

For a while it works as the characters come to grips with the blasts that took away one common element in their lives: happiness.

But after a while, the juxtaposition of varied stories begins to have a sameness that is ennui inducing. Gonzalez could pull it off because the story traverses across continents.

The viewer gets breathing space, the film goes outdoors. Here the story stays in one city, in similar environs. The lingo remains the same for a major part. The challenges similar too.

Watch Kamat’s “Mumbai…” only to see another step in the growth of multiplex cinema. Looking for a poignant story or a film that is consistently gripping? Look elsewhere. This film only offers crumbs, the cake has to wait.

ZIYA US SALAM

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