Mumbai
Meri Jaan (drama)
Cast:
Paresh Rawal, Madhavan, Soha Ali Khan, Irfan Khan, Kay Kay
Menon
Direction:
Nishikant
Kamat
Critics rating:
MOHAMMED Rafi may have
penned the unforgettable ode to Mumbai
Aye dil
hai mushkil jeena yahan
long years ago, when Mumbai was still Bombay,
nevertheless, it's today that cinema and sociologists seem to have felt the
`spirit' of the city...A city that never sleeps, never stops, never dies.
Mumbai Salsa, Mumbai Cutting, Mumbai Meri
Jaan
are all recent tributes to the quintessential never-say-die spirit
of India's Maximum City.
Making his debut in Hindi films, director
Nishikant Kamat strikes the right note as he captures the chaos that is
unleashed in the lives of a bunch of Mumbaikars after the 2006 bomb blasts in
the local trains. And through their attempts to cope with the emotional and
physical upheaval, the filmmaker lays bare the very soul of the
sparkling-sinking metro, where life goes on despite death;
bhaichara
(comradeship) wins over
divisive forces. Indeed, an uplifting message, told without any preachy
sermons.
The film opens with the blasts, captured imaginatively, and
then moves on to characters who were somehow affected by the event. Madhavan is
the white-collared patriotic geek who prefers to travel by the Mumbai locals to
save the environment and doesn't want to leave
amchi
Mumbai for Silicon Valley.
The blast makes him re-think his priorities and question his
patriotism, specially when
Google Earth
shows him safer havens in not-so-distant shores. Soha Ali Khan is the prep
schoolish TV reporter who begins by reporting the news and ends up as the news
herself when her own channel tries to boost TRP's by sensationalising her grief.
She's lost her fiancee in the blast. Kay Kay is the unemployed angry
fella who thinks it's time to buy a
swastik
Tee and stop doing business with the `other' community after the blasts.
Irfan, a street coffee vendor, uses the fear psychosis in the city to strike
back at the glitzy world that denies him an entry.
But it's left to
Paresh Rawal to bring to life the essential
Mumbaikar
and the Indian too -- as he
creates an unforgettable character in the persona of the low brow cop who
patrols the curfew-bound city with his idealistic rookie partner and
re-entrenches the secular, humane credentials of our
Constitution.
Watch it for it's soul-stirring spirit and for its
stellar performances, specially by Paresh Rawal.