Parineeta-1962 A love story. Review on Parineeta

Parineeta’s beauty lies in its simplicity. The director, Pradeep Sarkar has invested all his hard work and emotions into the film and it shows. Even today Calcutta is more or less still the same and the way the director has portrayed the story, shows his deep love and affection for the place. The whole ambience of the film depicts the time period, in which Calcutta shone in all its glory. Be it the majestic procession of the Goddess Kali, the trams meandering the streets lazily or just the general bonhomie of the joint families.

Although I personally don’t like flashbacks, I liked the way it was done in this one. Shekhar (Saif) is despondent and lost in his private world of memories related to his love, Lolita (Vidya Balan). He is angry with the circumstances of his past that have led him to the D-Day of his marriage to someone else. And thus the story begins.

The gist of the story is something like this. Lolita stays with her uncle as she was orphaned at a young age. Lolita and Shekhar are neighbours and childhood buddies. Lolita’s uncle is not that well off as compared to Shekhar’s father who is an astute businessman. Friendship eventually leads to love but both families as usual are unaware of the ensuing love story. Misunderstandings crop up and the lovers are separated because of the scheme concocted by Shekhar’s conniving father who places profit over everything else. The plot thickens with the arrival of Girish(Sanjay dutt) who helps Lolita’s uncle but unknowingly widens the rift between the families.

All the songs are beautifully woven in the story especially 'Kasto mazza' which makes you wanna run to the nearest hill station. ‘Piya bole’ tells its own tale of happy togetherness and the merriment of living in imaginary situations with your beloved. The only song that might have been out of place was the wedding song, 'Dhinak Dhinak Dha'. But that can be forgiven, as all the songs cant be perfect. 'Kaisi paheli' with the whole Moulin Rouge effect was a delight both in terms of picturization and the panache with which Sunidhi Chauhan has sung the number.

Every actor has given a powerhouse performance. The casting director has thankfully not miscast anybody (think Jackie Shroff as Chunnibabu in Devdas, horrible mistake). Here Saif reiterates that he can act well if he wants too. His character really comes alive in the latter half of the film and he makes his mark in showing his anger, his restraint and his haplessness. New find Vidya Balan emotes with her eyes without any need of long-winded dialogues. After a long time, we have another actress like Rani Mukherjee, who can speak volumes with her eyes.

Sanjay Dutt is simply smashing with his endearing presence and mischievous dialogues. He seemed to be having a slight Munnabhai hangover with his do-gooder act but his character was the kind of person girls swoon over. All the rest of the characters didn’t have too much to do but shone in their respective roles.

The sound effects although good are so abrupt at times that it had an unintentional mirthful effect on the audience. One such scene was the one in which Shekhar shrugs angrily away from Lolita and the resulting sound effect caught us completely off guard and had everyone in splits.

Parineeta and Devdas are big screen adaptations of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's novels. Both stories had neighbours falling in love with each other but eventually separating because of class and status issues. The basic difference is that Devdas had a sad ending while Parineeta ends with the truimph of love. Also cinematically, Devdas was used as an excuse to spend crores of money on lavish sets and clothing, but the final product lacked soul. Thankfully in Parineeta, the art director has managed to recreate the whole look of the 60’s without the ostentatious display of wealth.

Every frame of the film has a vintage effect to it, which just highlights the whole cinematic experience. The sepia tinted images leave an impression on your mind as it brings back memories of a lost era. Parineeta wins your heart with its old world charm and at the end of the day what matters is that for two hours you were in a different era whose beautiful memories stay with you forever.