Hrithik Roshan – The Bach

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s movies are like epic poems. “Khamoshi” was a poem, “Hum dil de chuke sanam” was a masterpiece, “Devdas” was an epic and “Black” was all of them. Then, he got tired of presenting poems. Now he presents only drafts – unfinished ones. Guzarish is one among them; it seems that he dint put too many thoughts into it to make it perfect. Started well though!

Quick question, does “major milestone” translate to “bada meel ka paththar” in Hindi? I dint keep myself updated with Hindi, then! Anyways, back to review.

Guzarish falls short of telling a convincing story, tries to give a wrong message in between, then turns weird and finally ends like a Karan Johar movie – making everyone in the hall cry. Fortunately there are several clues in the movie shows it had a great idea behind it before while it was written and Bhansali lost it later point.

Plot is very simple. Flashback is picked from (Oh, sorry… inspired by) a Hollywood flick – “The Prestige”. A jealous illusionist (in Bollywood a magician) gets the apparatuses bugged and boom! Mr. Ethan Mascarenhas (Hrithik Roshan) is crippled for rest of his life. Ethan takes this as a challenge and starts a radio show from his bedroom, and he becomes popular once again. After a decade of doing this, he decides give up his life and files a petition against Union of India for an approval on mercy killing, which gets rejected as it is unconstitutional.

This is how Goan maids look like., any questions ?

Guzarish

The movie ends with an indication that his maid (Aishwarya Rai) will assist him to do when court rejected. Now, this story went wrong for two major reasons

Movie does not attend the reason why Ethan wants a mercy killing. Nowhere in three hours Bhansali shows Ethan is suffering or it is getting worse. Finally it looks like Ethan is asking for mercy killing Euthanasia (Referred as Ethanasia) because he got bored!!
Court does not attend the argument “Why grant Euthanasia only to him?”. They start to discuss it, but later they forget! I really don’t think “Because he chooses for himself” is a justifiable reason. This shakes the foundation of the movie.

All other areas (direction, acting etc) were comparatively good; they are in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s standards. I acknowledge that he is one of very few directors who don’t believe in overacting to bring drama, nor Masala. While I am thankful for that, it is frustrating to see some of the details are missed out.

Hrithik was good; BTW, did I mention that I brought him out of my “No watch list” after Kites? This movie could look good in his resume. Sofia (Aishwarya Rai) simply exists in this movie which any actor could have filled in. If you read the plot again, you see Sofia the maid (Aishwarya) does not have anything significant to contribute to the story. In-fact, she is one of the week points of the movie. If I were Bhansali I would have filled someone not so famous, like he did for that doctor or lawyer.

Now, list of flaws:

Why the movie gives old feeling? I initially thought the story itself is picturised in old age, at least 40 years. But no, they talk about SMS etc. Confusing! Is there a place in Goa where people live just like they did in colonial era?
The maid seems to be a financially poor girl with drunken husband, but appearance makes her look like a princess – couple of centuries of old. She has an heir style of German village girl and wears veils like a secret cult. Total confusion.
You can observe the difference between how Hollywood and Bollywood takes on exact same things differently. In Prestige he is an illusionist and here Ethan is Magician! In 90 minutes movie Hollywood does not forget to show a glimpse of magic apparatuses – they ensure whatever audience see is a result of smart equipment and quick movement. But Bollywood does not care – It just happens like any paranormal activity! They had 180 minute, just to remind you.
Konkani was dubious. In Hum dil de chuke sanam, there was some Guajarati and in Devdas, Bengali. In Guzarish Bhansali forgot about Konkani. There were couple of words here and there; they sounded more like Marathi than Konkani.
Songs weren’t great! There was one dance – A Goan would have been nice. Instead it was a Spanish..ish dance! Aishwarya treats it as metal rock! My point is Sofia does not look like a person who does mock rock in a pub, she is a serious character – If you observe she talks less than Man Mohan Singh.
Ash wears longest skirts in the world (already in Guinness records!) and she rides bicycle back home! It’s long since I’ve been to Goa, but it is hard to believe skirts keep getting longer there as days go. Nothing wrong with the concept, just that it is funny to imagine a 15^th century European skirt driving early 20^th century Hero bicycle.
What’s about Karan Johar ending please? For 15 minutes Ethan says thank you note. “Last but not least” and “Thank you one and all”.

Looks like Bollywood is rearranging its resources. Best chocolate hero Vivek Oberoy (remember Sathiya?) does action super hero roles (Remember Prince?), Martial art specialist Akshay Kumar does henpecked roles and now Best dancer in Bollywood plays handicapped! Salman and Shah Rukh..err what are they good at again ?

Kites! is fresh, well defined, finely directed and delivered. It is one of the best romantic movies of recent times. It was a pleasure to watch this. Masala factors of this movie are way within toleration limits. It wasn’t until recently Bollywood learned to present sentiments without overacting its way through for three hours.

Hindi, English and Spanish! Fortunately they all gelled well in the context, sounded very natural unlike previous attempts (For instance: My name is…). Bollywood generally runs into trouble in this area. Actors end up speaking bilingual dialogs “What happened!..Kya Hua!!”. Kites did not do this for goodness sake. Here Indians speak Hindi/English, Mexicans speak Spanish and rest English, simple! There were no trilingual/bilingual dialogues.

Spanish was a perfect fit for this movie, I feel it contributed a lot for movie being more romantic. If the story was based on Canadian and she speaks in English with our dudes, it wouldn’t have been so touching. For example, among these which one do you think is more poetic and touching “My Darling, You are bleeding” or “Está sangrando, mi amor!!”?

I take my words back on Hrithik, Mia culpa!. He is a fine actor, He can deliver amazing performance given a good plot and role. Also, he can do lot more than just dance and fight. Kites will be in bolded letters in his resume. Many of his previous movies happened to be mistakes, of his directors.

Barbara Mori was fantastic in her role, she is a fine actor and beautiful. But she is not as hot as most characters of this movie seem to think. Kangana Ranavat was a disaster; luckily she did not have a noticeable role.

There weren’t many songs!, perhaps they were.!, in background. They didn’t bother me much as actors did not lip-sync it. There was a dance though, but it was the part of the story and it was present day dance, not a set of Bollywood Ghagra-choli dancers with decorated pots on the cliffs of North Pole. Dance was well choreographed with fine break dancers.

Action scenes in Kites is something you wouldn’t have seen in any Bollywood movies, They were fantastic. There are few car chases and a cowboy-cops fight, all are above Hindi movie standards.

Mistakes:

Hrithik’s ability to walk and fight throughout the second part of the movie is inconsistent. A moment ago he is crawling his way through places and the next moment he is jumping on trains and stuff.
No car seems to have been fitted with air-bags. There are so many car crashes I haven’t seen any, even in a Las Vegas Casino owners car! Come on!
Though the plot looks fresh, some of the scenes are plagiarized. While watching you will have few Déjà vus. I dint bother to research on all of them, but here’s one for you. The movie ends with a gun fight highly inspired by the famous gunfight scene of “Road to perdition”. Those who haven’t seen this movie and planning to see Kites (which BTW I highly recommend), please watch this YouTube clip. If you see high similarities how Kites ends, come here and thank me.

Road to perdition: