The movie is dam(a)ned. Review on Daman

I was expecting to see so much in this movie specially as it portrays aspects of Assamese culture to which I belong. Well I was very disappointed to say the very least. Heres my dissection of the movie :).

Negative Aspects

Directed by Kalpana Lajmi, its a far cry from her other movies. It seems that this is a movie of some extremes which lets the man get away with the violence and sadism. She offers no solution to the masses about the way this situation is to be handled. Instead she creates very weak sub plots which have no effect whatsoever. The transition from past to present and vice versa is very abrupt with no cinematographic effects.. the result is that one does not know immediately whether the event is a flashback or is the present.

The next thing which I found somewhat unrealistic is the makeup. Sometimes Ravenna is shown with full make-up and sometimes totally sans makeup and then again the make up is overdone to depict the sadistic behavior.

There were four cameramen, which maybe was the result of the inconsistency of the shots. Sometimes the camera moved too much to build up the tension but then it resulted in poor viewing and sometimes there were some decent camera shots.

The whole plot was a good idea but it could have been handled better. Ms Lajmi was so bent on exposing the MCP attitude of the men, she forgot to look on the positive side. She introduced three very pathetic romantic subplots between Raveena and two men and then with Raima and Shaan. When I think of movies like Rudaali, Ek Pal, etc, Daman seems like a very amateur attempt.

The script was the weakest point in the movie. The movie focused too much on the physical abuse of the woman and well the woman in question was not shown to be spirited nor was the audience given any relief from the depressing scenes. The movie could have had lot of subtlety and lot of shades but it came forward as too stark and negative.

Positive Aspects

The scenic beauty of Assam was well captured. The music composition was good though Bhupen Hazarika created nothing original. He always converts the old Assamese songs to Hindi version. I must say however that the ultimate output was pretty good. ''Gumsum gumsum'' is a poignant number. ''Sun Sun Goria'' is a catchy number. ''Hu Hu'' is a romantic song. Do listen to the trailors first before you get the album. But that does not do anything for the movie.

The actors did their best. Sayaji Shinde can be a very good villian. He makes you want to slap him. Raveena did a good job though her best performance was in ''Shool''. Sanjay Suri was good in his role. In spite of all this, the film leaves a lot to be desired from Ms Lajmi. Raima's chemistry is very lame when you see her interaction with Shaan. She needs to work on her acting ability. Shaan would be happier if he sticks to making good music.

Story

The story is about a poor girl, Durga ( Raveena Tandon) who gets married into a rich family (Saikia family). She has no idea what a fiend her husband, Sanjay Saikia (Sayaji Shinde) is and how sadistic he could be. He continually abuses her and rapes her and constantly demeans her existence.

He marries her only because he is threatened to be taken off the will. She has her brother-in-law, Sunil Saikia ( Sanjay Suri) who empathizes with her and well this empathy somewhat creates a sort of romantic subplot which is suppressed due to society. The result of the rape is a child ( Raima Sen) who is also the victim of her father's psychological abuse.

The brother-in-law is abruptly removed from the scene. He is killed by the husband and well the husband also gets away with murdering his parents ( isn’t this too much) Meanwhile when Sanjay Saikia tries to marry his daughter off to another useless fellow like him, Durga rebels and flees from that place to Guahati where she starts a new life. There she finds a friend in the form of a police inspector who tries to help her and as a result he falls in love with her. But unfortunately her husband finds out and the story ends in a violent climax.

Suggestion

I would not recommend this movie. But if you still want to watch it, do check it out if it does air on the cable. Don't go out of your way to rent this movie or watch it in theatre.