Feb 19, 2011 04:45 PM
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(Updated Feb 19, 2011 05:41 PM)
The perfectionist Aamir Khan has been very selective about his films & since almost a decade is yet to give us film that can be called bad, because his films has a common factor called – Quality, with capital Q. His latest offering ‘Dhobi Ghat’ written & directed by his wife Kiran Rao is no different as it continues the tradition.
This is the era when majority of films that succeed at the box office are light comedy films & to produce a film that is entirely different from today’s choice of the viewers was always a great risk. So Aamir Khan certainly deserves a pat on his back for taking this calculative risk. Calculative, because looks like even he was aware of the fate of the film at box office hence the film is made a shoe string budget & with a certain plan from which they have not diverted the focus.
In an attempt to break the shackles of the today’s main cinema, Aamir Khan has defied the myth that only comedy films will succeed & has followed his obsession with perfection by presenting “Dhobi Ghat’ to the viewers. Though there were only handful of viewers in the theater (around 30 on day 7 at EROS) but the minimum attendance of people in the theater and the performance of the film at the box office doesn’t mean that the film is bad.
Film making is undoubtedly an art & majority of people watch films to get entertained. I am no exception but I have always believed that films can be beyond entertainment & that is where this film scores. It doesn’t entertain you fully but it does make you aware of certain things. It introduces you to the human feelings, which to an extent has vanished in this extra busy life of metro cities.
The film has four characters Prateik, Monica, Kriti & Aamir Khan. Monica, who is in Mumbai on an assignment & accidentally bumps into Aamir Khan. Aamir Khan a divorcee is a painter by profession. Prateik is a washer man. Kriti, whose life is stylishly narrated through her 3 video letters written to her brother. All characters different from each other & has a different story of their own but are somehow related to each other in the city of Mumbai.
Kiran Rao has guts to choose the subject for her debut film as a director to narrate four parallel stories & has successfully connected them to each other at the end with minimum of dialogues spoken. So here we have a lady director who has the ability to think out of the box without succumbing to the demand of commercialization. Though the narration tends to be slow even in a 90 minutes film, but her efforts as a writer and director cannot be ignored & are praise worthy.
Thankfully there are no songs in the film as there was no need for it. Background music reminds us of the times of films like Chakra, which were made some 25 years ago & it gels well with the film.
Photography is good. Dialogues are in sync with the mood of the film & at times the viewer is left to read between the lines. Watch out for Prateik conversation with a housewife, who removes him from the work after seeing him with Monica.
Performance wise all the debutants are good, where Prateik makes an impact as a new comer & given the opportunity he has the ability to prove himself at a higher level. Kriti narrating her letters in form of video has looked very comfortable in front of the camera while Monica though looked beautiful but will have to work on her expressions & dialogue delivery if she intends to stay in Bollywood.
Aamir Khan being the producer of the film has been given the role of a person who speaks less as it’s only his eyes and the body language that was required to do the act. And Aamir Khan does it with panache. He is top class. What a performer he is. Watch him when he watches the third letter that discloses the plight of Kriti.
The unfortunate part is that a large number of people of who watch films regularly have a fixed notion about their types of films. Some want to watch only romantic flicks, some only comedies, some wants action flicks, but very few people prefer to watch films of every kind and they are really few. I wish the numbers of this selected group increases to maximum so that more and more film makers are encouraged to make films that are really different. Because unless that happens films like Dhobi Ghaat will only be critically acclaimed and not viewed by a large number of viewers.
