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Release date:
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October 7, 2016
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Director:
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Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
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Cast:
Language:
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Harshvardhan
Kapoor, Saiyami Kher, Anuj Choudhry, Art Malik, Om Puri, Anjali Patil, K.K.
Raina, Iteshyam, Anuja, Shourya Pratap Singh Shekhawat
Hindi
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Once upon a time there was a man called Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra who
lived in the Enchanted Forest of Imagination and Splendour.
One day, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra decided to make a film on the Punjabi
folktale of Mirza and Sahibaan, setting it in present-day Rajasthan.
It was a story of love, faith, hope and betrayal, rocks and hard places,
Scylla and Charybdis, devils and deep seas. It was a story that lent itself to
the kind of epic scale and magnificence that Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra was known
for in the Forest and the many lands of Far Beyond.
And so Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra went about gathering the best team in
the Forest for his film. He roped in Dadasaheb Phalke Award-winning stalwart
Gulzar for the screenplay and lyrics.
And Gulzar did not let him down with the songs. He wrote with
wistfulness, of a little boy mooning after a girl, of a woman torn between her
family and her lover.
In the Village on the edge of the Forest there lived a Critic. She was
filled with hope for Mirzya for she thought Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Rang De Basanti released in 2006 was
one of the best Hindi films of the 21st century, and though some folk
in the Village said his Bhaag Milkha Bhaag in 2013 was over-wrought, she did not agree with them.
When Gulzar’s words for Ek Nadi Thi, put to tune by the
formidable Shankar Ehsaan Loy, sung by the Nooran sisters and K. Mohan, rose up
from the screen, a feeling of warmth enveloped the Critic. “Ek nadi thi dono kinaare / Thaam ke behti thi / Ek nadi thi… / Ek nadi thi koi kinara chhod na sakti thi”
(There was a river who embraced both her banks / There was a river… / There was
a river who could not leave either of her banks). A picture began to paint
itself.
It was clear that Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani and Loy Mendonsa
had poured their soul into Mirzya. The melodies, the instrumentation,
the choice of voices – it was oh so beautiful.
Most beautiful of all was Daler Mehndi, whose full-bodied rendition of
that evocative title track got the Critic’s pulse racing each time.
In the same Forest there lived a cinematographer called Pawel Dyllus,
who bathed Mirzya’s present in burnished tones and the blazing sun,
while drenching the past in a dreadful steely gray. Pawel Dyllus’ canvas was
large, and every frame was a museum piece, not counting some close-ups of the
lead actress Saiyami Kher in which her make-up was screaming out at the viewers
– a folly indeed.
The music, the lush landscapes and shadowy interiors, Mirzya’s art
design and narrative structure were designed to build up a haunting atmosphere.
There was foreboding in the air. Great sorrow would befall these people – the Critic
knew that, not only because everyone
in the Village had read of Mirza and Sahibaan, but because she sensed it in the
air of the Forest.
Mirzya was related as a fantasy fable, juxtaposing the ancient saga of Mirza
and Sahibaan against the contemporary account of H.R.H. Prince Karan, his one
true love Soochi – daughter of a top policeman in Rajasthan – and the stable
boy Adil. There was much promise in this idea.
But Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra made a big mistake. He strayed from the
Path of Golden Rules, he did not chide Gulzar for writing a screenplay with
many strong pillars but no rooms, for constructing a fascinating frame with no
interiors, for outlining characters that could have been interesting if only he
had filled in his lines with colour and life. Perhaps that was not possible. After
all, Gulzar, as the people of the Village well know, is a legend.
There were moments when the Critic thought, “Ah, this looks and sounds
so good. Maybe soon the life blood will flow?” And she waited, and waited, and
waited. But it did not.
No doubt Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra had aimed his film at intelligent,
well-read Village dwellers. He infused it with literary references, but mostly
with the words of an old English wizard called William Shakespeare. Then
though, he doubted the knowledge of the Village people and felt driven to
mention the names of Wizard William, Romeo and Juliet, just in case the Critic
and her Village did not quite get it.
It was a film with few dialogues. In the Enchanted Forest, words are
precious. Yet Mirzya squandered away its limited number of spoken lines
with clunky writing. Such as when a father and a fiancé pun on the word “samaan”
(property, possession, thing, stuff) to refer to the woman they love and the
luggage she has brought home from her travels.
Now in the roles of Mirza and Adil, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra had cast young Harshvardhan Kapoor (son
of actor Anil Kapoor, brother of Sonam Kapoor, nephew of Sridevi Kapoor and
producer Boney Kapoor, cousin of Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh). Harshvardhan
was a debutant so sweet of countenance, with eyes of such boyish innocence, that
the Critic wanted to reach out and embrace him, and whisper, “Come child, I
will protect you from this film. For it does look like you could be better
employed.” Some scenes hinted at a fluid face of a million possibilities, but for some reason Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra had given him an under-written
role. He had little to say, the camera rarely dwelt upon his face and in his
one big moment in the film, when he filled the screen and turned around to look
at a figure of treachery, he deadpanned.
Saiyami Kher fared no better playing Sahibaan, but as Soochi, she got
enough space to display her smart personality and innate pizzazz. Saiyami Kher,
so the Village crier said, was the
granddaughter of Usha Kiran, an actress of yore, and the niece of Tanvi Azmi.
Oddly enough, the central character written with most empathy was
neither of these two, but Prince Karan. And actor Anuj Choudhry stepped up to
the challenge, making a mark despite the frigid film within which he found
himself.
Moral of the fable: all the packaging and grandeur in the world, all
those artistically
writhing bodies doing a sexual dance as a backdrop to Mirza-Sahibaan and
Soochi-Adil-Karan, all those pretty costumes and young actors with potential,
Shankar Ehsaan Loy and Daler Mehndi, they all add up to nought if the heart of
your story does not beat.
Early on in Mirzya, a character quotes a moonstruck Romeo’s monologue on Juliet:
“She speaks yet says nothing.” It is an unwittingly apt description of this
film. It speaks, yet says nothing.
Ah that Wizard William, he whose
works in which you will find passages relevant to every given situation all
these centuries later.
The Critic thought: all is not
lost, for in Harshvardhan
Kapoor, Saiyami Kher and Anuj Choudhry, Mirzya has presented to us, three
newcomers who may give the people of the Village great pleasure in the coming
years; and forgiveness ought to be offered generously to the man who made Rang
De Basanti.
So the Critic embraced that thought and slept peacefully that night, remembering
that in the Village and in the Forest in every tale, they always all lived happily
ever after.
Rating
(out of five): **
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CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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129 minutes 45 seconds
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A
version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:
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