ZINDA !! Rocks. Review on Zinda

Zinda is definitely not the kind of film that can win the endorsement of every viewer. A sizable number of the audience will no doubt find the film's resolution or even thematic material repulsive.

The neo-sepia tone , the gritty , grainy feel at an era of DVD with picture perfect postcard locales , bright colors and beautiful actors ( mind you !!) and Actresses , ZINDA comes forth as dark , grimy , melancholic , with shades of grey that seems to somewhat represent the theme of the movie.

The finesse of production, the usage of Samurai and oriental fighting techniques, the absolute absence of Guns and Bullets (which seem s to be served in over the top does in films nowadays), lend a theme of valor and vulnerability.

The ongoing Monologue, usage of TV scenes to show passage of time and the overpowering concept of being locked in a room for 14 years is bound to make you feel claustrophobic, if not weak in the knees and tender soreness in your knuckles.

There is this entire fight sequence in the Prison Building where Sanjay Dutt fights with a hammer .It was so fresh in approach. The human touch to it , how he falls down and gets up , tired and wounded , it was wonderful – a visual pleasure. The moment after he is stabbed in the back and he gets up and fights and then rests against the wall , it was a experience to hear Shivani Kashyap croon “ MAUT SHARMINDA , JISM JAAN HAI ….Woh ZINDA HAI ..” it was such a perfectly placed song sequence, and it carried on till Sanju baba is put into the TAXI.

Another moment as such was when SANJAY DUTT and LARA DATTA is searching for the shops selling fried wantons...the sequence gives way to the song “ YEH HAI MERI KAHANI” by Strings ,( it’s a personal favorite) ..The song lends so much to the narration and the desperation and finally the jubilation. It was almost poetry in motion.

I have lost interest in Bollywood movies since nothing different intrigued me , but ZINDA hit me , HARD …I watched it – 3 times in a Movie Theatre , grimacing when SANJAY DUTT pulls out the teeth of the prison owner , or later when he is almost about to pull out his own teeth , the grey shades reduces the visual gore a lot , since the blood doesn’t look as menacing , and yet the chopped of hands , looks downright an amateurish latex puppet. Its ok , INDIAN CINEMA has matured so much , we can forgive these otherwise dead giveaways.

Unwatchably ugly and breathtakingly beautiful, gut-wrenching and delicate, heartbreakingly emotional and coldly manipulative, mind-bogglingly entertaining and almost arrogantly artistic, Zindais a mass of contradictions that nonetheless coheres as a whole. It is unclear at this point whether the movie can eventually claim the position of a world-class masterpiece, but one thing is certain for me: ZINDAis without doubt the most purely cinematic (both in form and content) piece of work, the truest motion picture, to be ever released in Bollywood.