Release date:
|
September 9, 2016
|
Director:
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Nitya Mehra
|
Cast:
Language:
|
Katrina Kaif,
Sidharth Malhotra, Sarika, Ram Kapoor, Sayani Gupta, Rohan Joshi, Taaha Shah
Badusha
Hindi
|
The concept of an
individual getting a glimpse of their future and coming back in time to correct
the present has been repeatedly visited by Hollywood. It has not, however, been
explored in contemporary Hindi commercial films so when Delhi boy Jai Varma
(Sidharth Malhotra) wakes up one day after a fight with his fiancée Diya Kapoor
(Katrina Kaif) to find himself fast forwarded in time and place to their
honeymoon in Thailand, it is natural to expect an unconventional film.
And in the first half,
that is what director Nitya Mehra’s Baar
Baar Dekho is.
“With the benefit of
hindsight” is how we often preface discussions about lessons learnt from our
past. Imagine though having this “benefit of hindsight” in your today, in the
moment, in your here and now? That is what Jai gets and for the initial one hour
of the film, his confusion, his regret over his mistakes, his desperation to
return and fix what he messed up, and the suspense over how this will all turn
out are enjoyable. His attack of commitment phobia in the beginning is abrupt
and therefore unconvincing, but excusable because what follows is intriguing
for a while.
Then the curse of the
second half strikes.
Mehra, who seems so
assured pre-interval, seems not to know how to keep her film going. The
constant back and forth is fun pre-interval, but in the second half it becomes
tiresome. And with the writing just skimming over Diya’s character, Jai’s fight
to keep her in his life ultimately becomes his fight, not ours.
At several crucial
points in the film, Diya asks Jai why he loves her and his changing response is
projected as a marker of his evolution as a person, yet not once does he ask
her why she loves him. She is, after all, not conceived as a three-dimensional
human, but as Jai’s sprightly childhood friend who grows up to be his sprightly
adult lover, no more. The writing (story by Sri Rao, screenplay by Rao, Mehra
herself and Anuvab Pal) gets so involved in the business of time travel that it
invests less and less in character development, thus gradually making both Jai
and Diya – especially Diya – people who are unworthy of our emotional
involvement and time.
Still, the film is not
without merit. Kaif and Malhotra both look stunning. She remains a limited
actor, but it is only fair to say that she is becoming more at ease in front of
the camera with each passing film. Malhotra is a fine actor in possession of
perhaps the most sensitive pair of eyes among the Hindi film heroes of his generation. He does his
best to make something of the written material at hand here.
The strong supporting
cast includes the ever-reliable Sarika as Jai’s mother and Ram Kapoor as Diya’s
father. Their characters get the same cursory treatment accorded to Diya in the
script, which gives them very little space to display their acting chops. Both
are mere devices to facilitate Jai’s story rather than being individuals in
their own right. The only satellite characters written with some degree of
depth are Raj (Rohan Joshi) and Chitra (the feisty Sayani Gupta from Margarita With A Straw), but neither
actor makes a mark here.
The real star of Baar Baar Dekho is its top-notch
production quality. Hindi films rarely get ageing make-up right, but this one
does. Mark Coulier, Natasha Nischol and the rest of the prosthetics and make-up
team (along with the lighting and camera departments) deserve kudos for their
work on Malhotra and Kaif. The film has been shot in Scotland, India and
Thailand, and cinematographer Ravi K. Chandran turns every frame into a work of
art, starting with that early moment when a tree fills the screen, the camera
casually moves behind it and then returns to give us our first view of a young
Kaif leaning against it. Spectacular.
The songs are
unobtrusively woven into the narrative. Kaala
chasma accompanying the closing credits has foot-tapping appeal, but it is
not half as hot within the film as it is as a standalone video.
For a film that aims at
being a philosophical commentary on living in the present, focusing on the
small joys of life and not resting your entire existence on a future you do not
know, Baar Baar Dekho ends up being
very limited in its exploration of this point and others. In fact it needs to
be said that it is not half as rebellious as it seems to consider itself.
Certainly it is unusual to see a Hindi film in which a hero apologises to his fiancée/girlfriend/wife (Sultan too
did that recently – surprise surprise); it is just as unusual to see a husband
point out that his career decisions affect his wife as much as they affect him
and he has no right to make up his mind about some things without consulting
her. Yet ultimately, a man who could not bring himself to accept financial
support from his wife’s father at the start ‘evolves’ into a man who still
feels the need to underline his role as the provider who will set up a studio
for his artist wife without pa-in-law’s monetary help. And in the end, the film
becomes less about throwing ourselves completely into our present (good point,
point taken) and more about underlining the essentiality of marriage as the
natural goal of any romantic relationship. So what’s new?
Sadly then, Baar Baar Dekho does not have the
courage or the questioning mind we saw in Shakun Batra’s Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (2012) though both are Karan Johar productions.
Early in this film, Jai
tells Diya that he wants more from life than their marriage, he wants a career
which is unlikely to take off if he ties himself down to her. Because we see
evidence all around us in real life that marriage ends or slows down most
women’s professional journeys, we never discuss the possibility of it being a
hurdle in the way of a man’s professional dreams. After all, most wives follow
their husbands wherever they are transferred, manage the home and children so
that he can bag that next promotion and that next pay hike, and let their own
ambitions take a backseat? It was curious to see a man expressing a fear we
usually expect from a woman. This was an idea worth exploring but falls by the
wayside as the film trundles along to a socially acceptable conclusion that
would please a conservative audience.
If I had the power to go back in
time and any power over Team Baar Baar
Dekho, I would cajole or bully them into rewriting the second half of their
script. In the present though, in the here and now, this is a film that starts
off well but fails to sustain itself.
Rating
(out of five): **1/2
CBFC Rating (India):
|
UA
|
Running time:
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141 minutes
|
This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baar_Baar_Dekho
