These distances ! Born from incomplete facts !. Review on Yeh Faasley

Time and again, I have asserted on this forum that it's communication gap which leads to confusion and misunderstandings between persons and harm their relationships. Hence, things should be spoken and clarified lest they should generate rifts in relationships. Today I reiterate it in the context of a movie that I am reviewing. It's Yeh Faasley(2011).

Yeh Faasley(these distances) is a relatively recent movie which is less known to the audience because of lack of hype and low profile cast which, among others, were the factors leading to its commercial failure. However I watched this movie on internet and found that it's not that trash. It has its moments and plus points.

Other than communication gap, if something creates misunderstanding between people, then it's lack of awareness of complete information related to something or clarifying it further, incomplete knowledge of some phenomena. It is said that absolute ignorance is preferable to incomplete knowledge because it's a human instinct to fill in the gaps of information with imagination of something which may or may not be true. And this false imagination leads to misunderstanding somebody. Ditto for wrong interpretation of available facts. Communication with that particular person can resolve it and communication gap, on the contrary, reinforces it.

And now a word about suspense or mystery because this movie has a suspense or whodunit element too. I always wondered how the mystery writers generate suspense in the stories. And after watching this movie, I got my answer. Suspense or mystery is nothing but the missing links in a chain of events. You know something but you don't know everything with respect to a phenomena and that information gap only is the suspense or the mystery for you. And when all the missing links are found and properly placed, thus making the chain complete before the eyes, it's the unravelling of the mystery. This movie is an illustration in this regard whose punchline is - You can only imagine the truth. It starts with a strenuous drama between a father and a daughter and later, gets formed into a whodunit.

As said above, Yeh Faasley is a father-daughter story. A Punjabi girl, Arunima Dua(Teena Desaai) who is living happily with his loving widower father, Devinder Dua(Anupam Kher) and is in love with a suitable boy, Manu(Rushad Rana); suddenly comes to know that her mother, Raagini(Rachita Bhattacharya) had not died accidentally and there's something about her death which is unknown to herself as well as the world. Though Raagini was killed in a car accident, Arunima sniffs that that accident had taken place due to some foul play and actually her mother was murdered. The obvious suspect is nobody else but her loving father only. She puts the question straightaway to him whether he had murdered his wife(and her mother) and gets a negative answer which is not able to answer all the interrelated questions following the main question. And though Devinder tells her about the strain in his marital life, she feels that something is still being hidden from her. Meeting some outsiders in this regard adds fuel to her restlessness to know the truth. She files a legal suit against her father charging him for murdering her mother. The father wins the case and gets acquitted by the court but the issue does not end. After a great emotional tension between the father and the daughter, the father is again tried in the court and this time, gets sentenced to death. However all the relevant questions have still not got their answers and when Devinder Dua is going to be hanged shortly, a couple of new questions prop up, leading to deepening of the mystery of the death of Raagini. Arunima's beau, Manu finally unearths the mystery, unmasks the real culprit and saves the life of Devinder when he's within inches' distance from the gallows.

The highlight of this movie is the peculiar and very delicate relationship between an unmarried, motherless, young daughter and a loving and caring widower father which definitely renders the element of novelty to the movie. The way, the father-son relationship is a special one, the same way the father-daughter relationship is also a special one, especially when the mother is no more. When there is abundant love and care in the small family, the daughter takes care of her father as her mother would have taken if alive and if the father has some vivid pluses in his personality, she looks upon him as her role model and dreams her beau or husband to be on the same lines. The same is the scenario in the family shown in this movie. But once the daughter comes to know that there's something fishy about her mother's death and suspects her father in this regard, then this suspicion takes all the love and respect for her father away from her heart. It's something stressed the most in the story and it is the most well-directed aspect of the movie as well, ably supported by the power-packed performances of the leading actors playing the father-daughter duo.

The mystery is also quite good whose solution is found to be the most simple one when known in the end. However the problem with this movie is the deficiencies in screenplay and direction. The writers and the director could not decide whether to make this movie as an emotional drama or as a murder mystery. And this confusion continues for a major part of the movie, leading it to nowhere. The scenes appear to be repetitive and story(especially in the second half) seems to be dragging endlessly without a destination. The length is too much. The director would have done better had he focussed on one thing only - the drama or the mystery and curtailed the length of the movie by 25-30 minutes. The excessive length has made it boring. The court-room scenes appear to be childish.

Technically the movie cannot claim to be very good. Several scenes yell for want of proper light. Camera work is just average. Editor has not done his part well and allowed the movie to go beyond two and a half hours time. The background score is good though.

The music composed by Deepak Pandit is good though it's virtually impossible to keep the songs in mind after the movie. However with the help of meaningful lyrics, the music director has made good situational songs like Zara Sa Ansuna, Kitne Din Beete and Aaj Rang Hai Ai Maa which are in line with the mood of the movie, sung emotionally by Deepak Pandit and Shreya Ghoshal.

Anupam Kher and Teena Desaai have delivered outstanding performances which make this movie worth at least one watch. Teena has played a loving daughter who wants to know the truth from her father, suspecting him to be the cause behind her mother's death but when he is sentenced to death by the court, she repents. Anupam, on the other hand, has played a loving father who despite being innocent, gets ready to embrace the death for the sake of the mental satisfaction of his daughter. Rushad Rana has also done well. The supporting cast is studded with talented artists but all of them have been wasted in small roles.

Yeh Faasley is not an excellent movie. However, it's not a bad movie either. Taking all the aspects into account, my final verdict(with my rating of 2.5 stars) is that this movie is not everyone's cup of tea. Despite having a good suspense element, the mystery fans may find it boring. It is mainly for the audience liking tense emotional dramas and for the fan-following of Anupam Kher.