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Monday, February 10, 2025
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BOLLYWOOD MOD
EDITOR'S PICK
Rating: ***1/2
Ahhhhhhh! It`s been a while since one felt that stab in the heart while watching
a love story trot towards its somber culmination. Love`s like that. When put on
film, it can make you fall in love with the emotion called love, as it happened
in Imtiaz Ali`s Jab We Met.
Ayesha Takia brings to this film a kind of inner conviction that makes you want
to believe in her faith in the oft-abused emotion. When Ayesha speaks her lines,
they don`t sound written in this under-written film about love that has gone
into the realm of the surreal.
Veejay turned actor Rannvijay Singh is the nerdy stranger who walks into Ayesha/Aranya`s
tranquil life in a scenic soporific hill station that`s threatened, rather
crudely, by a construction magnate whom we overhear saying, The first
thing we`ll do is get rid of all the greenery around here.
Happily for us and the film, such insensitive moments are too far and in between
to make a difference to the gentle tale of a girl who runs a watch repair shop
in town where time has nearly stopped still.
Nagesh Kukunoor and his lovely leading lady are most comfortable with the
silences that punctuate life away from the city. The camerawork by Chirantan Das
shamelessly creates picture-postcard images all around Aranya`s life and world.
The relationships that emerge from the sedate silences of a life lived in an
ageless vacuum are woven into a plot which careens between being a fragile fable
and a mawkish melodrama.
Caught in that morning-time dim dawn sun when the world looks irresistibly
innocent and shorn of corruptibility, the goings-on in Mod are so
evocative of an era that never existed outside the poet`s imagination that we
tend to forgive the plotting excesses that mar the second-half of the film.
The finale on the hilly railway station, however, erases the clumsiness of some
of the proceedings in the second-hour. And what we are left with is a film of
heart-aching beauty, so tender and evocative that in terms of manmade craft it
replicates the intricate thread-work of a Kashmiri carpet where very often the
design is so nuanced the naked eye can`t see the craftsmanship.
The film has some truly tender supporting performances from Raghuvir Yadav
(playing a zany Kishore Kumar fan), Tanve Azmi (always capable of tremendous
empathy) and specially Nikhil Ratnaparkhi as Takia`s overweight suitor who in
that one sequence where he pleads and threatens Ayesha Takia to marry him,
brings so much bridled emotion into the film you are left feeling satiated with
the vast amount of talent that this delicately drawn fable-romance pitches
forward.
Ayesha, of course, presides over the subtle proceedings. With her
effortlessly-drawn emotions she is a treat to watch in every frame. Rannvijay in
a complex role that demands various mood swings from the actor, is surprisingly
in-charge.
Mod is like a gentle sonnet played on a cosy winter morning. It is
the tenderest love story in ages with a central performance by Takia that
strikes a chord deep in your heart. Mod is a film you want to adopt
embrace and hold close to your heart.
Director Nagesh Kukunoor's 'Mod', which was set for a Sep 30 release, will now come out Oct 14.Read More
Mod is a heartfelt, emotional love story between two completely mismatched people.
Aranya (Ayesha Takia Azmi), a “full-of-life” 25 yr old, lives in the sleepy and idyllic hill station, Ganga. The little town is the home of many colourful characters – Ashok Mahadeo (Raghubir Yadav), Aranya’s whacky father who is the head of the local fan club of Kishore Kumar, the fiery Gayatri Garg (Tanve Azmi), “GG”, her aunt, friend, and confidant, who runs a restaurant and is a mother figure to Aranya, chubby Gangaram (Nikhil Ratnaparkhi), the local shopkeeper who harbours feelings for Aranya and Ashok’s music band, the ever present Kishore Bhakts.
Aranya’s mother left to pursue bigger dreams in the city when Aranya was a little girl and both father and daughter hope that one day she will return. They wait dutifully everyday to see if the lone train that passes by their house will bring her back.
Aranya runs a watch repair store, a legacy handed down by her mother to support her father and herself. One day a total stranger, Andy (Rannvijay Singh Singha), lands up at her doorstep to have his watch fixed. He is painfully shy, but keeps returning day after day to have his water logged watch repaired. As payment, he leaves a 100 rupee note in the form of an origami swan. Aranya slowly warms up to this quirky stranger and through a series of meetings and against all odds they fall in love. But who is Andy? Where is he from? And what is his past?
As Aranya discovers the truth about Andy, the film heads to an exciting and emotional climax in the strongest tradition of great love stories. When love happens, life takes a turn…
