KEDARNATH {2018}
Director: Abhishek Kapoor
So we are revisiting the tragic cyclonic storms that claimed so many innocent lives in Uttarakhand in June 2013. To give the maverick director his due credit he has certainly done a fantastic job of recreating the horror in the last fifteen minutes of the movie.
Set in Uttarakhand the tragic love story features a young passionately in love couple Mansoor (Sushant Singh Rajput) and Mandakini (Sara Ali Khan) who are but obviously by Bollywood tradition divided by class and religion. With the families at war the unexpected storms create the much needed sensation in the story.
Director Abhishek Kapoor has focussed majorly on the anti climax sequences wherein the special effects are adorable and worth appreciating, when we can go ga ga over the cartoon like effects in the over hyped 2.0 (2018) why not give due credit to the effects here which are authentically conceptualised and look realistic. Kapoor nearly sleepwalks in his direction through major portions but is thankfully rescued by his lead players( who are extraordinarily excellent), nobody might remember Kapoor as a flop actor from some duds of the 90’s but he’s certainly showing that spark of a good film maker in this movie.
Though special effects take the cake here, the cinematography, art direction and dialogues are also noteworthy. Unfortunately the editing, screenplay and music are a major letdown. Some listeners may disagree considering the music has that soothing effect yet it doesn’t fit into the story.
Sushant Singh Rajput proves his acting mettle by delivering like a veteran, an actor of few words he manages to impress with his body language and facial expressions. Sara Ali Khan is mighty confident for an debutante and has a lot of spunk and proves her capabilities in her first impression itself, she’ll be a welcome change among the pencil thin anorexic plastic dolls in Bollywood.
Supporting cast gets lesser screen time yet Pooja Gor and Nishant Dahiya make their presence felt. Good old Nitish Bharadwaj (remember the admirable Krishna from Mahabharat(1988)), Arun Bali, Sonali Sachdev get very little scope to perform. Alka Ameen is sincere in her portrayal of the suffering Mother.
Thankfully Kapoor hasn’t relied on melodrama or the typical mandated Bollywood overdramatised scenes, the communal angle to the Muslim man and Hindu girl love story is courageously underplayed. Even the deaths during the storm are not dramatised.
Basically the movie relies on its lead players and the penultimate sequences, one can easily skip the entire movie to just watch the recreation of the storms in the end and it won’t necessarily take away the soul of the story as such. Kapoor also gets brownie points for depicting his female lead character of Mandakini aka Mukku (Sara) as a rebellious and strong girl who speaks her mind out even if it means using foul language in the presence of her orthodox mother, when it comes to her love story she defies her “tradition” and makes the first move to woo her lower class Muslim lover, she’s shown to be fiercely unapologetic about her untraditional opinions or romantic feelings, even during the horrifying storms she ferociously attack’s her villainous husband (Dahiya) like an wounded lioness, certainly a good move for our Bollywood leading ladies.
A good, sincere and cinematically beautiful attempt to present a love story scarred by the nature’s wrath, Kapoor’s premise of cashing on a Hindu Muslim love angle with the Uttarakhand tragedy as a backdrop can well be categorised as a “tragic love story” though Mansoor-Mandakini can’t be labelled as historic as Vasu- Sapna or Prem- Suman but their romance is definitely better than some of the insipid teenage love stories being presented nowadays in Bollywood.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
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