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Saturday, October 12, 2024
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BOLLYWOOD SHUBH MANGAL SAVDHAN
EDITOR'S PICK
'Shubh Mangal Saavdhaan': Get It Up With Ayushmann (Review By Subhash K. Jha ; Rating: ***)
It's okay if you can't get it up.
There. I said it. It's taken Hindi cinema years and years to be liberated from
the shackles of libidinous machismo. An actor called Ayushmann Khurrana has
done.A He plays an ordinary guy with a routine problem with such conviction.
Ayushmann's Mudit in "Shubh Mangal Saavdhan" suffers from performance anxiety
whenever he tries to make out with his bride-to-be, played with spunk and
spontaneity by Bhumi Pednekar who is rapidly emerging as the voice of the
mofussil woman.
In many ways, Bhumi is the hero of this remarkable film that's eventually bogged
down by too many stereotypical characters associated with the small-town joint
families.You know them, quirky, cantankerous, eccentric, whimsical but cute and
honest.
Bhumi's Sugandha is one of the most sharply-written female heroes in recent
films. Sugandha is deeply middleclass and proud of it. She resolves to marry the
sexually dysfunctional (albeit temporarily so, but who knows!) Mudit not out of
any false sense of bravado but because... well, this is the best she can get.
And he is so goddamned devoted.
Once she makes up her mind to go with Mudit she will see her resolve to its
logical (?) conclusion.
Screenwriter Hitesh Kewalya finds space in the cluttered canvas to give the
couple breathing, if not breeding, space. Their first (aborted) sexual encounter
in a cramped MIG flat in Delhi with sounds of songs and everyday conversation
seeping subtly into their activity is done in a lengthy flurry of furious
foreplay signifying nothing. It's a sequence filled with clumsy groping and
slurply smooching played out with endearing honesty.
Another brilliantly written sequence of foiled passion has Sugandha trying to
seduce Mudit at a picnic with a plunging neckline and groaning tips from an
orgiastic song that goes "Come to me, Danny Boy".
Danny Boy's reactions of smothered frustration are priceless. Though the script
constructs a case for the girl's bourgeois heroism (if you can't have cake have
the crumbs) for me the real hero of the film is Ayushmann Khurana's Mudit. A man
who loses his 'manhood' but holds on to his dignity even as the entire family
scoffs at his condition, and emerges a hero in the most unforeseen ways.
Ayushmann expresses Mudit's erectile disenchantment with just a whisper of a
look, a hint of despair... subtle sly and chic, this is an Everyman played with
reined-in vigour and unostentatious valour. Though his character suffers from
performance anxiety this is performance supremely devoid of any anxiety.
Lamentably the script crowds Mudit's dignified anxieties with sniggering friends
and scoffing relatives.
I wish the couple had been left alone by the screenplay to sort out their mutual
problem. By bringing the entire family from both the sides into the picture to
thresh out the problem on hand, the film ironically mocks the very malady that
it so sensitively puts forward. Some of Ayushmann's scenes with his father and
his future father-in-law with both the patriarchs trying to bully him out of his
temporary dysfunction, are way too high-pitched and clamorous. It's like
shooting down an injured birth with a canon.
The Big Indian wedding and the activities surrounding it ,have for some time now
been a source of great colour vibrancy and irony in our cinema. But the wedding
festivities have now become a cliché. We need to move on now.
"Shubh Mangal Saavdhan" serves a dish that's provocative and tongue-in-cheek.
Director R.S. Prasanna steers the situations away from cheesiness even when a
doctor tells Mudit: "You are making a big thing out of a small thing," and Mudit
replies: "That's exactly what I am not able to do."
Ayushmann says such loaded lines and dips glucose biscuits into hot tea to
explain his poignant plight to his wife-to be, with heartbreaking earnestness.
This is a brave and bright film with its heart in the right place and its gaze
refreshingly free of a gender bias fixed firmly at the crotch level.
Filmmaker Aanand L. Rai, busy shooting his upcoming film "Zero", says he will ensure the movie will deliver more than what it promises.Rai interacted with the media at a special screening of "Baa Baaa Black Sheep" here on Monday.His film "Zero" features Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma and Katrina Kaif.Read More
'Tiger Zinda Hai' snubbed at Filmfare Awards 2018 nominations
Salman Khan's "Tiger Zinda Hai" shook the Bollywood box
office from slumber by registering record-breaking business last year, and
"Newton" got global acclaim by becoming India's official entry for the Best
Foreign Language Film at the Oscars 2018. But the two films failed to earn a
nomination in the main categories for the 63rd Jio Filmfare Awards 2018.
The nominations list was released on Thursday.
"Tiger Zinda Hai", which
released on December 22, minted Rs 206.04 crore in seven days. The film has been
nominated in just one category -- Best Action, leaving out Salman from the Best
Actor in a Leading Role category.
As for "Newton", starring RajkummaRead More
