Like Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance, the evocative opening sequence of Reema Kagti Talaash tells (co-written by Zoya Akhtar) a story in a tightly spun, unforgettable montage. Here the story is of the dispossessed and the marginalised. Invisible to a rushing, glittering- on- the- surface megapolis. The old woman with nowhere to go. The drug addict and the dog. The begging child, the sex workers, the lonely musician, the lost and the faceless, the bar girls. And pathways and alleys that Javed Akhtar describes as “gumrahon ke raaste.” And a netherworld where there is noise but utter loneliness and where everyone is searching for closure, respite, escape, freedom, a name, a face maybe that belongs to them. The film is packed with moments that speak for themselves even as something else is going on the surface. The bare walls of a grief stricken home where a couple shares their first meal (a takaway) with friends, with unpacked baggage around them. And the day when the grief finds its way out, a painting finds its place on an empty wall to the soft strains of classical instrumental music. And the utterly squalid ugliness of little hell-holes where women are sold and bought, untold violence unfolds and loyalties shift with each opportunity, each murder. There is an atmospheric texture (both emotional and visual) right through the film that reaches out and grabs you.
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Every space that the film is shot in by the brilliant K U Mohanan, has imprints of a narrative The ugly, dingy homes of pimps and their errand boys. The unpainted forbidding walls of interrogation rooms and police stations where files spill out of shelves, phones ring and the search for questions goes on amid chaos and dead ends.
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And then occasionally we see how a chosen few live in Mumbai, In the pent-houses of never-ending high rise buildings and where not a smudge can be seen, and expansive, white-draped rooms open to infinity and even mourning is conducted with designer decorum and yet murder is just a dial away.
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Very early in the film you understand that this is not a routine story about the loose ends of a murder or a suicide. It goes deeper in the heart of grief that cannot be faced. And a marriage devastated by loss. About answers that the conscious, rational mind cannot grapple with. Answers that can reach only the deepest, most vulnerable part of your being.
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The denouement of the primary search in the film is not for everyone. The same twist has been filmed in many Hollywood (especially one that I will not mention here or it will give away the conclusion) and many Bollywood films with varying degrees of success and you can debate whether the film really needed to stray down the path it does in the end but there are solid moments of layered cinema till you get there and decide whether you like the film or not.
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The performances for instance work. Starting with Nawazuddin Siddiqui who can just create believability with a single blink and a glimmer of fear and hunger and greed in his eyes. He is one of our finest actors. Rani Mukherjee, thankfully takes a break from her tailored-to-please recent performances and stays within the skin of her character and shines everytime she faces the camera with those unbelievably expressive, peat moss eyes. Here, she is unafraid to be ordinary and yet compelling in her poise, her breakdowns, tears and laughter.
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Aamir Khan. Now let’s get one thing straight. Despite the obvious physical preparation he has done for the role, he has nothing much to do in the conventional sense, His Surjan Singh Shekhawat is not a police man in the mould of Chulbul Pande or Rowdy Rathore. This is a man who seeks out silence and solitude and battles demons within far often than the ones he meets in the real world. There are no grandiose set pieces to showcase him and he throws just one punch during the course of the film. His eyes and body language are enough to take on an entire posse of hench men of a brothel as he coaxes a young girl to trust him and come away with him. His moments come when he cries alone, and replays a key moment of his life and tortures himself again and again. He has no swagger and just a desperately raw nerve that twitches every time someone reminds him of his past. And that scene in the end where he sits alone and cries possibly for the last time. His dialogue delivery is not his strongest point but his total surrender to a role is. Always. It is incredible that at this stage of his career he is willing to play second fiddle to a character and is not playing the megastar that he is.
Just for that final scene where he cries in the arms of his wife, I can watch the film again.
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Kareena Kapoor. It is by now undeniable that the camera loves her. She too is thankfully restrained and remains in the right key for the character she plays. The music by Ram Sampath is like velvet with sounds you want to caress and loop around your senses. The poignant Jee Le Zara sung with feeling by Vishal Dadlani is almost a soul cry of the emotionally disconnected. Muskane Jhooti Hai opens the film and is the theme song of not just the film but possibly Mumbai.
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Kagti’s first film Honeymoon Travels had great promise and then a tongue-in-cheek twist took away its believability and even though the twist in Talaash is heartfelt, only the fate of the film in the coming days will show us, if it has worked or not.
Watch it for the moments though. They are worth the price of a ticket.
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Again a wonderful story with twists and turns that keep you glued to know whats next. The characters are well defined with each one having a definitive role to play and not there for the heck of it. Aamir performance, well he has done far challenging roles. For me the movie was a nice movie and well worth a watch.