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A film crosses the line: The Pioneer
Dec 09: This one from the Khaled`s school of sensitive Muslim cinema is quirky little tale of a quirky little family of two daughters, a singer mother and a defeated dead father. The promos said it was the daughter who crossed the line but much into the film, it seems the mother actually did so.
Dec 09: This one from the Khaled's school of sensitive Muslim cinema is quirky little tale of a quirky little family of two daughters, a singer mother and a defeated dead father. The promos said it was the daughter who crossed the line but much into the film, it seems the mother actually did so.
The film on the whole is perched delicately on an explosive situation brewing in the otherwise smiling eyes of Urmila Matondkar, who marries without her mother's consent and is happy staying away from her for a couple of years till the ageing diva of the gayaki world decides to look up her two daughters.
Besides the fact that the story is held together despite puzzling behaviour from its main protagonist Shabana Azmi, the choice of faces goes to a large extent to lend weight to Khaled's efforts. As the self-important diva who masks her intense loneliness and her dogged love for music behind a playful and somewhat insensitive countenance, Shabana lives the character in real earnest though her Makdee make-up still seems to have hung on to her face. Urmila, as the daughter with a grudge and an impossible to live with knowledge of her mother's biggest secret, simmers both in body and emotion and puts in quite a measured performance. Over the years, she has mastered the art of histrionics and this one is just a speck in her lengthening line of 'real' roles of the like of Bhoot and Pyar Tune Kya Kiya, not to mention Pinjar.
But the real life of the film springs from the two fringe characters that hang around the mother-daughter duo. Diya Mirza lives up to the retarded role she is thrust into and Arjun Rampal as Urmila's husband is a breath of fresh air. Tehzeeb is that strand of real and poignant emotion that will put off the front and middle benchers. And, as we all know, discerning viewers are few and far between and definitely not box office material.
Besides the fact that the story is held together despite puzzling behaviour from its main protagonist Shabana Azmi, the choice of faces goes to a large extent to lend weight to Khaled's efforts. As the self-important diva who masks her intense loneliness and her dogged love for music behind a playful and somewhat insensitive countenance, Shabana lives the character in real earnest though her Makdee make-up still seems to have hung on to her face. Urmila, as the daughter with a grudge and an impossible to live with knowledge of her mother's biggest secret, simmers both in body and emotion and puts in quite a measured performance. Over the years, she has mastered the art of histrionics and this one is just a speck in her lengthening line of 'real' roles of the like of Bhoot and Pyar Tune Kya Kiya, not to mention Pinjar.
But the real life of the film springs from the two fringe characters that hang around the mother-daughter duo. Diya Mirza lives up to the retarded role she is thrust into and Arjun Rampal as Urmila's husband is a breath of fresh air. Tehzeeb is that strand of real and poignant emotion that will put off the front and middle benchers. And, as we all know, discerning viewers are few and far between and definitely not box office material.