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Release
date:
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March 29, 2019
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Director:
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Nitin Kakkar
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Cast:
Language:
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Pranutan
Bahl, Zaheer Iqbal, Mir Mohammed Mehroos, Mir Sarwar, Mozim Bhat, Mir
Mohammed Zayan, Soliha Maqbool, Baba Hatim, Adiba Bhat, Hafsa Ashraf Katoo,
Madikha Parvez Ratta, Bareen Faheem, Ahmed Rigoo, Neelofer, Hemant Kher
Hindi with
Kashmiri
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Sometimes sweet simplicity is all
it takes.
Director Nitin Kakkar’s Notebook is set largely on a pristine
lake in Jammu and Kashmir where an ex-Armyman gives a new career a shot, taking
to teaching Kashmiri kids in a remote island school. Kabir is battling his own
demons while coping with the unique challenges of the new job when he comes
across a diary written by his predecessor.
Firdaus was not one to accept
authority blindly. While at Wular Public School she poured her frustration,
loneliness and life’s great questions on to the pages of that notebook, which
ultimately falls into Kabir’s hands.
The young man is, expectedly,
soon drawn to this woman he has not met but has come to know well through her
innermost musings, and decides that he is in love with her. Truth be told, 20
years back I might have been moved by this
love-across-barriers-of-space-and-time aspect of the film’s storyline, but the
older me believes that while attraction is not something within our control,
love is a decision and not a word to be bandied about lightly.
Still, Notebook works because the Firdaus-Kabir lurve angle is not rubbed
in our faces beyond endurance, because the narrative style is filled with an
innocent sincerity that is hard to find in mainstream commercial Hindi cinema
these days, because the individual stories of Firdaus and Kabir are more
intricate than the storyteller’s unassuming tone lets on (and of course it is
natural that they would be attracted to each other since, after all, they were
genuinely getting to know each other through their writings).
Most of all, Notebook works because of those children. Everything about them –
the adorable cast, Firdaus’ commitment to them, Kabir’s increasing attachment
for them, their playfulness, and one boy’s desperation for an education.
The trailer of Notebook emphasises the Firdaus-Kabir
romance and relegates the children to the background, although the intersection
of the bond developing between all of them is its actual selling point. No
doubt there is space here for greater detailing and depth in the
characterisation of most of the little ones, but there is still enough in the
screenplay to make the interactions with these bright, mischievous darlings
enjoyable, and to make the boy Imran in particular both memorable and
heart-tugging.
Nitin Kakkar knows well how to
make a political comment without lecturing his audience. He did it with
rip-roaring humour in his debut film Filmistaan,
and with endearing understatedness in last year’s Mitron that was pulled down solely and entirely by the decision to
cast Jackky Bhagnani as the leading man.
Troubled Kashmir is obviously a
fertile playing field for a filmmaker like him, and he does a commendable job
of driving home the tensions and pain beneath the scenic tranquility of this jannat. The mother who takes a crucial
decision for her children, a despairing father, a boy who can envision a future
in which he is sucked into the bitterness but also sees a way out of this
morass, a man who stood by friends when their lives were under threat, a woman
in a patriarchal world who knows her mind and is unafraid to speak it, a man
who gets a bird’s eye view of the human cost of war and does not casually brush
aside any loss as “collateral damage”, they are all present in this short,
charming tale beaming with an optimism that is perhaps occasionally simplistic
but serves as a much-needed salve for the soul in the divisive times we live
in.
Imran is played by the handsome
child debutant Mir Mohammed Mehroos whose mature, deeply felt performance belies
his age and inexperience. Each member of this ensemble has something to offer,
but this new entrant deserves to be singled out, as does Mir Sarwar who plays
his father with flair.
The adult debutants of the film
are both proteges of producer Salman Khan, as media reports tell us. Pranutan
Bahl who plays Firdaus is the granddaughter of screen legend Nutan. Zaheer
Iqbal, Notebook’s Kabir, is reportedly
Khan’s friend’s son. Unlike with the remake of Subhash Ghai’s Hero, here Khan has chosen well.
Pranutan was born to be before
the camera. Neither she nor Zaheer would fit conventional Bollywood definitions
of prettiness, but they possess an X Factor that counts for much more than
that.
Notebook is based on the Thai film Teacher’s Diary whose writer-director
Nithiwat Tharatorn and co-writers are duly credited here. Their screenplay has
been adapted by Darab Farooqi with dialogues by Sharib Hashmi and Payal Asar.
Kashmir is not a mere gimmick in
the reworking, it is a well-considered change of setting. Like the fact that
Firdaus and Kabir belong to communities on opposite sides of the
socio-political schism running through the state, the choice of place too is
not underlined or turned into a sermon.
With the exception of Bumro, the soundtrack is not
extraordinary when heard independently, but the songs are inserted nicely into
the narrative and fit the mood of the film well. Bumro of course is infectious. This Kashmiri folk song was earlier
used in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Hrithik Roshan-Preity Zinta-starrer Mission Kashmir. The loudness of that
earlier film is a sharp contrast to the determined quietness of Notebook.
I can imagine some people seeing
a saviour complex in a tension-ridden scene featuring Imran, his Dad and Kabir
in Notebook, the sort of complex that
usually dominates stories of race, caste and gender (look no further than this
year’s Best Picture Oscar winner Green
Book), but to my mind that would be an unfair criticism in this case. The scene
is a culmination of the actions of every single player in the drama until then,
not Kabir’s alone, even though the others are not foregrounded in that moment.
The most problematic aspect of
the film comes elsewhere, in the “ladkiyan
sab aise hi hotey hai”, all-women-are-traitors line taken by one of the
characters, that is left unresolved despite being a dominant track in so many
mainstream Indian films and in the sense of male victimhood that pervades the
backlash against feminism.
Notebook is not perfect, but like the
sterling Kashmir waterscapes in the film camouflaging so much turmoil, and captured here so
beautifully by cinematographer Manoj Kumar Khatoi, it too is worth a visit.
Rating (out
of five stars): **1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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115 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
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