It falls a little short. Review on Pinjar

This movie is better than the vast majority of Hindi movies churned out each year, and you should definitely go see it. That?s a fact. Having read Amrita Pritam?s book myself, however, I couldn?t help but see a bunch of little irritating changes that the director seems to have made for absolutely no reason. In my opinion those changes seriously detracted from the movie, although Manoj Bajpai?s performance more than made up for any and all flaws.

The first half of the movie was horrible. There were far too many songs and far too many cutesy scenes, all trying to tell us one thing. It was way too obvious and a little insulting to the audience?s intelligence, kind of like sticking a huge flashing neon sign over our heads that said: ?PURO IS INNOCENT AND HAPPY AND HAS A HAPPY FAMILY, IN CASE YOU STILL DON?T UNDERSTAND? They could have gotten the message across by sticking with the actual novel (which only had one song in it and was NOT annoyingly cutesy at all); instead they needlessly prolonged the whole pre-wedding process. The audience got a repeat cutesy performance with Lajjo and Ramchand, only it was slightly less annoying because it was much shorter.

In this half of the movie both Sandali Sinha and Urmila Matondkar seem to have drawn heavily from Mahima Choudhary?s child-woman performance at the beginning of Pardes/Sri Devi?s performance in every movie she acted in.

For me, the kidnapping scene was a relief. I knew there was no way they could add a song-and-dance sequence to that, and I decided that there wasn?t any way they could mess up the book after this point, because there wasn?t anything in the book that could humanly be messed up after the kidnapping. I was wrong. While Manoj Bajpai and Urmila Matondkar gave perfect performances, the director made the mistake of cutting out some incidents from the book, cutting out certain parts of some incidents, and adding random things from his own imagination.

For example, the wedding scene. It shows Puro saying ?yes? at the wedding because she envisioned Ramchand in Rashid?s place. That?s ridiculous. It wasn?t in the book. She said yes because she didn?t have much of a choice. The scene with Puro realizing she is happy where she is when Rashid gets sick and she nurses him is taken out.

Though they kind of tack that on at the end of the movie.. And then there was the scene with the insane woman?s child. In the book the Hindus take the baby away from Puro, and then dump it back on her when they realize they want nothing to do with a baby that isn?t from a good family, and they don?t want to go through the hassle of taking care of it. In the movie it just shows the Hindus taking the baby away from the Puro, and that?s the end of that. I don?t know if they changed it in the movie just to make the Hindus look better (?). I do know for sure that throughout the movie there was a conscious effort to make Ramchand look better than he did in the book. In the book Ramchand promptly agrees to marry Puro?s sister; in the movie he is shown as this high noble-minded character who thinks that would be inappropriate.

Other than that this movie was great. (I personally can?t see how anyone could have resisted Manoj Bajpai that long. but anyway...) I would certainly have enjoyed it more if I hadn?t read the book. I thought it kind of paralleled the Ramayan, or at least there was an undercurrent of it, in the way Puro is kidnapped, goes back and is rejected, and when finally given the chance to go back, decides not to. Maybe that was the reason why Lajjo and Ramchand were singing that song from the Ramayan about being exiled.

The one odd part in the movie is the fact that Trilok consistently ignores Lajjo and doesn?t seem to care at all about her being kidnapped; when Lajjo comes back, he focuses on Puro. The only one who cares about Lajjo is her brother Ramchand. At the end, as the truck pulls away somehow you get the feeling that Lajjo isn?t going to be very happy where she is.