In his non-fiction narrative on Bombay, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, Suketu Mehta writes:
If you are late for work in Bombay, and reach the station just as the train is leaving the platform, you can run up to the packed compartments and you will find many hands stretching out to grab you on board, unfolding outward from the train like petals.
Kiran Rao captures through her lenses a Bombay which generates a new meaning for everyone who visits the city. What Arun (Aamir Khan) feels about the city ---“Mumbai my muse, my whore, my beloved’ ----- is Kiran’s feelings too, or else she could not have shot Bombay so romantically, yet realistically. The film opens on the rain-drenched Marine Drive through Yasmine’s (Kriti Malhotra) amateurishly held video-camera, and soon moves to other people and other stories inextricably connected with each other. Arun’s painting exhibition is a tribute to all the people coming from different states of the country, people who have made Bombay what it is today. Arun makes a dig at those whose political agenda is to officially provincialize the city. The film cutting across class and community borders is actually an answer to the drive towards such provincialization.
Shai (Monica Dogra) who flies to the city from New York on a sabbatical falls in love with Arun, while the slum-dweller washer-boy Munna (Prateik Babbar) gradually falls in love with her. The film effortlessly moves amongst the world of art, the dark underworld of the city, the posh high-rises and cramped slums, and breathes into the city the freshness of the sea breeze and the infinite mystery of the ocean itself, the mystery of how human relationships are sustained overcoming so many differences.
Arun’s discovery of Yasmine’s video-tapes reveals for him a new perspective of looking at the city. Yasmine, the newly-wed girl from Uttar Pradesh, captures every nook and cranny of the city, every single activity that forms a part of her Bombay life to send to her brother Imran in the village. Arun starts living Yasmine’s life through the tapes and is absolutely shattered when he conjectures that Yasmine had taken her own life in the very room where her videos have been playing day and night.
Pratieik’s dhobi is perfect in body language and in dialogue delivery. His awareness of his class when he visits his customers, his shyness when Shai offers him to be her city-guide and when he gradually falls in love with her, and his anger at his brother’s murder − all these emotions are in the right place. He doesn’t act, but behave. The same is true of Monica Dogra and Kriti Malhotra.
The camera within the camera technique is simply brilliant, for often you do not realize whose narrative you are listening to (read watching)? Is it Yasmine’s or is it the omniscient director’s? Tushar Kanti Ray has done a commendable job! Gustavo Santaolalla’s background score is so very much in tune with the scenes, that you barely recognize it as background score separately.
Lastly, a good piece of art is many things roped into one.. But quite significantly it reestablishes faith in the essential goodness of human beings. Perhaps this is what Dhobi Ghat does and how! A single visit to this ghat is not enough…you would feel like going back.
6 comments:
film seems to engender too many different opinions.
medusa guesses one will have to watch for oneself.
thanks for the review, brilliantly written.
Dhobi ghat is a brilliant piece no doubt, but there is something lacking which doesn't bind the movie into a wholesome "soul unites mind" experience.Firstly, Amir Khan is complete miscast in teh role. He is too suave and too Amirish to essay the character. The wildness of an artist is totally lacking. He is a good actor and he has portrayed it as he does to every role he is cast but I personally feel, he is way too "out of the way". The only thing that looms large and engulfs you is Bombay, the city and Prateik Babbar as the dhobi.
I still feel there should have been more to the film....too many things unsaid, too many situations unexplained and too many miscasts.
My experience of Dhobi Ghat was a bit different from Kaustav though I must say your review was very well written. I specially enjoyed reading the Mumbai train bit in the beginning..
As for myself I liked the interlinking of the narratives in the film, Prateik's eyes and Yasmin's traumatic tale really touched my heart..
The sound of Mumbai rains, and the image of the all absorbing sea could have become the real soul of the film..if they were used in a better way .The way Eliot's "Preludes" the fragmanted images are linked together with various symbols, which becomes the soul of the collage, in Kiran Rao' film photography creates a similar bond between the four characters..Yasmins'tapes which captures Arun's creative insight and impels him to live her life( I liked the way he traced his name on the sand like Yasmin), Shai's photographs which awes Munna, Arun's paintings which touches Shai and Munna's portfolio pictures which makes him as well as Shai happy..loved the way Kiran shows them each leading onto the other .. The ending however left me a bit disappointed for I felt there was a lot many other ways it could have been more touching... a lot much much remained unsaid..And last but not the least even I felt that Amir Khan was a bit miscast as Arun the painter, a fine actor like him should have noted that artists are more cavalier in their attitude than merely blending rain water with whisky.. The way he smokes somehow doesnt look natural and spontaneous..
I liked the backdrop of the film..it is that which I felt was its USP ..the setting that provides the framework to the narrative..and links the characters together despite their differences, but I guess what you bring back from the film..is Prateik's eyes, and you feel a strange kind of joy and wonder how acting runs in his genes..Though am not sure if I would visit again..but one thing for sure Kiran's debut as a director was commendable..
I agree with both Anindita and Shyamali di that Aamir was not up to the mark...I guess it's difficult for any star to shed the star-status and portray a normal human being!
Loved the review, I felt like reading on even after it was finished. I agree with one of the other commentators, that it seemed to be a stitching together of these little vignettes. As for Aamir Khan and the way he portrayed his character - that was one of the main reasons I fell in love with this movie. For once here was a movie that did not depict a frenzied artist feverishly going through life and creating his art. This felt more at home with the artists I have known and grown up with who are very acutely aware of everything around them,every sense is utilised to create a work of art. When he touches the ring on her feet after making love to her, when he wears Yasmin's pendant..... there is this sense of taking everything in and letting it wash over you. To imbibe it through all your senses which will ultimately culminate in a work of art being created. His portrayal of the character seemed very real to me.
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