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Release date:
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June 17, 2016
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Director:
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Nagesh Kukunoor
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Cast:
Language:
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Hetal Gada,
Krrish Chhabria, Vipin Sharma, Gulfam Khan, Rajiv Lakshman, Vijay Maurya, Vibha
Chhiber, Suresh Menon
Hindi
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There is a scene in Dhanak, in which two boys are seated on
a swing with Pari, the elder sister of one of the li’l fellows. She watches
them with affection and mildly chides them for over-eating as they stuff their faces
with jalebis. The mini gents feed each other, but it seems not to even occur to
either of them to offer her a nibble.
Later, Pari sits with her brother
Chotu and a child-like man. Again, the man feeds Chotu while not even asking
her if she is hungry, and again, she seems not to mind at all.
It is unclear whether writer-director
Nagesh Kukunoor intends us to read Dhanak
this way, but his latest film is as much an unspoken comment on the
male-centricity of our collective human existence, as it is an endearing road
movie about two siblings journeying across a desert to meet Shah Rukh Khan.
Dhanak is the story of Pari and Chotu
who live with a childless uncle and his heartless wife in a village in
Rajasthan. The kids lost their parents a few years earlier, and Chotu lost his
eyesight when he was four. Now eight, he is the focal point of 10-year-old Pari’s
life. She selflessly showers him with love, deliberately fails in school exams –
despite being a very bright student – so that they can end up as classmates,
and has promised him that his vision will be restored before he turns nine on
October 2 of the year in which we meet them. As it happens, Pari is a fan of
Shah Rukh while Chotu is obsessed with Salman Khan
When Pari sees SRK on a poster
for eye donations and later learns that the star is shooting near Jaisalmer,
she runs away from home with Chotu to get her favourite Khan’s help to help
Chotu.
During the risky excursion from
their tiny hamlet and across the blazing Thar, they meet a motley bunch of
characters who serve as a reminder of the evil that exists in this world while
also underlining a fact we too often forget: that the good out there far exceeds
the bad.
Kukunoor keeps his tone real and
the proceedings believable through most of the film. For the most part, Dhanak is consequently both charming and
insightful. Even when he stumbles occasionally, the children remain consistently
loveable. And stumble he does, such as in the chance encounter with a somewhat clichéd
white man (Chet Dixon), the abrupt shift in gears to a mystical realm with a
soothsayer (Bharati Achrekar) and the stereotyping of the children’s hard-working
aunt (Gulfam Khan) as a mild version of the evil stepmother from old fairytales
while their lazy layabout of an uncle (Vipin Sharma) is viewed through a lens
of indulgent tenderness.
Through all this though, the
characterisation of Pari and Chotu, and the incredible child actors playing the
two, remain pitch perfect. Their conversations flow naturally, their chemistry
is palpable and at no point does Kukunoor try to manipulate us with precocious
cutesiness as so many directors do when they are working with such young artistes.
The children are surrounded by an
array of interesting supporting actors, most especially Vipin Sharma playing
their uncle and the attractive Rishi Deshpande as an elderly truck driver.
These are strong performers to be up against, but Hetal
Gada as Pari and Krrish Chhabria as Chotu are more than up to the challenge. They
were just 10 and eight years old respectively when the film was being shot, yet
they do not take a single misstep. Producer
Elahe Hiptoola reveals that 500 kids were auditioned in Mumbai, Jodhpur,
Jaipur, Bangalore and Hyderabad to find this pair.
There is more to
them than their innate, innocent charm. They were born to be before the camera.
It would interesting to see what Chhabria grows up to be, since he currently has
the advantage of a baby-like appearance, is of slighter stature than the girl
and in the film, has the benefit of playing a bratty, chatty youngster of the
kind adults are usually drawn to. She – taller, with a face maturer than her
age – is a confirmed quantity though: sweet-voiced Hetal Gada is, without
question, a formidable talent.
Hats off for the
casting win, Team Dhanak!
Chirantan Das’ camerawork among
those scorching desert sands is eye-catching. Tapas Relia’s songs are uniformly
catchy and include a revisitation of the lovely old Dama dam mast qalandar in the stunning voice of Devu Khan
Manganiyar.
This brings us to a concern with
an element in the film’s sound quality though. The transition from
conversations (and one actor’s own singing voice) to the playback song
recordings is not smooth at all. This audio bumpiness is glaring even to my technically
inexpert ears and occurs more than once in the film.
It was also a mistake to let
Krrish Chhabria himself sing the opening line of Tujhe dekha toh yeh jaana sanam at one
point while he has professional playback artistes singing for him
through the rest of the film. The contrast between
his regular Joe voice and the extraordinary singers who have sung playback for
him is needlessly rubbed in our faces considering that Chotu’s singing ability
is one of his striking qualities.
This is particularly
disappointing because elsewhere it is evident that the director does care about
detail: in the personal Shah Rukh story each satellite character has up their
sleeve, in the lipstick mark that should not be on that coffee mug with a
starring role…
Overriding any and all
reservations are the two children at the heart of this film, their seeming
incorruptibility and artlessness, the touching bond they share, Kukunoor’s way
with children, his trademark sense of humour, and Dhanak’s faith in faith. Chotu asks Pari one day: Why do you credit
X with this kindness being done to us, when Y is responsible for it? She
replies: Leave me to believe what I believe, and you believe what you wish.
That, ultimately, is what Dhanak is
about: allowing the mind to wander where it will, seeing a rainbow (dhanak) in the night, putting your trust
in who or what you will – God, miracles or even Shah Rukh Khan.
Clearly, stories of siblings and sensitivity
towards physical disabilities are Kukunoor’s great strengths. 2005’s Iqbal featured a warm relationship
between a deaf-mute cricketer and his supportive younger sister. That film
stands head and shoulders and a whole human being above his other works. Dhanak, warts and all, is a reminder of
the best that this director can be.
It is hard to say which is the
star of this film: the writing of the child characters or the manner in which
the director has just let them be or the child actors who play them or the fact
that Chotu is not made an object of pity by the film? There’s a whole
constellation twinkling at us off screen from this warmly appealing,
life-affirming film.
Rating
(out of five): ***
PS: So does Shah Rukh Khan make an
appearance in the film? My lips are sealed.
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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117 minutes
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