Dhobi Ghat

There are multiple reviews out there, most by professional who can do a better job than I can, so I’ll not get into the normal review mode and start with how Kiran Rao’s debut venture is a story of 5 characters, Munna, Shai, Arun, Yasmin and Mumbai. Or how she has captured the ethereal Mumbai and the strive by the characters for their lebensraum in the maximum city or something to that accord.

It’ll get its critical acclaim, a big opening it has already got, but I don’t think it will appeal much to the average viewer who gets satiated by movies like Dabanng and Robot. At this point I wish I could call this movie path breaking or a masterpiece or anything of that sort but I can’t.

It’s like the black & white photographs in the movie by Jyotika Jain which just exist. So is the movie and the three characters, the movie can be a called a character study but doesn’t hold any narrative in the traditional sense. For me a movie is like a painting and book combined, while it must tell a story which is gripping it should also have a visual beauty. Visual Beauty doesn’t mean pretty landscapes or women getting out of sea in bikinis, it should have some art in what you are filming. I take movie watching seriously because I think the movie makers took their job seriously but through this movie my and other audiences mind wandered off many times. The metaphors and tributes in the film are many, some real some just imagined by the critics. I am afraid this might become a movie which many people will pretend to like because the critics are saying so, a set of emperor’s new clothes so to speak.

The movie captures many of Bombay’s famous landmarks and places which have become clichés now. It doesn’t seem captured by a neutral by stander but more by someone like Shai (Monica Dogra) who has come from America and like all tourists only wants to capture the poor, backward, worn down part of the city. Most of the action takes place around Mohd. Ali Road, Dhobi Ghat, some slum and other such parts. The other part of Mumbai has just been casually referenced. It could be fascinating for some people but for the average Indian (I included) have seen several such scenes in their life and the beauty of it, if any, is lost to them. They can’t relate to the fascination or curiosity towards it by Kiran Rao.

But still the movie has its moments, for me the most endearing is the part played Yasmin (Kirti Malhotra), the lonely new bride who only talks to the audience through the video tapes played by Arun (Aamir Khan), she is excited and fascinated by moving in the big city but also longs for her family and her past. She keeps a brave face till the very end when she realizes that her husband is having an affair and commits suicide. The scene where Arun realizes that what had happened to this house and runs out scared is the really the most memorable one.

Shai plays the part of NRI staying in the US and back to India on a Sabbatical to capture Bombay on her digital camera. A luxury only the rich Americans can afford. And she plays the role of someone like that pretty well. Obsessed by the reclusive painter Arun, fascinated by old part of the city, the washerboy, wants to capture his daily routine like delivering clothes on film. As much as she offers the Dhobi tea at her house and gives the better mug to him she still doesn’t think of him as her equal. Like anybody like her will do in real life. So she says hi to him when in the multiplex but hides from him while buying drugs, he takes her around to his part of the town but she never takes him to her part of town, her world.

Munna wants to be what film makers think that every guy in Bombay with half decent looks wants to be, an Actor, that if doesn’t want to be a gangster first. And while he falls for her he keeps his sanity and doesn’t tell her that, because he knows that ‘they’ are never gonna happen. I don’t think you would have seen this movie of Manoj Bajpai called ‘Dil pe mat le yaar’. Manoj Bajpai plays a mechanic who is very honest in his job and a little too naïve for his own good. Tabu plays a journalist who does a story on him and thinks of him exactly like that, subject matter of a story. He on the other hand misreads the whole thing and arrives drunk to her house to profess his love to her. Of course he is turned down and Tabu utters the line “Men. You get friendly to them and they think all you want is to sleep with them”. Quite parallel to this scenario.

All the actors have played or rather under played their roles quite well and the background score by Gustavo Santaolalla's is quite good too. Aamir Khan tries hard not to misfit in the role of a painter which is reminiscent of his last role as a painter from ‘Taare Zameen Pe’ but he does spoil the look of Indie film sometimes. All in all I think I will watch the movie again to see something which I might have missed the first time but I would still say if you that if you want to see the real Mumbai go take a walk in the city. Probably you will find out more about the city in those 95 minutes. There are better movies out there who talk of alienation, love and longing in Bombay.