Saturday, May 16, 2015
Bombay Velvet
Rough Patch
A great deal of
effort has gone into the making of Bombay Velvet—recreating 1960s Mumbai in Sri
Lanka; the sets, costumes, props, period details mostly immaculate. Anurag Kashyap knows the importance of
design, cinematography, sound, music and promotion, so his films are always
packaged and presented well. If only he could drop his gangster fetish and
ambition to be the Indian Martin Scorsese, he might be able to realize his true
potential.
Bombay Velvet, based on Gyan Prakash’s Mumbai
Fables (he also co-wrote the script) starts just after Independence and
spans twenty years—the years that transformed Bombay (as a character says). The
tumultuous Sixties were the period of Prohibition, the real estate boom,
unionism, mill workers’ strife, the beginnings of the Mumbai mafia and corruption
of the system.
In this simmering
cauldron Johnny Balraj (Ranbir Kapoor) grows up in a brothel, turns to petty
crime and street fighting and dreams of becoming a “big shot”; Rosie (Anushka
Sharma) escapes an exploitative relationship and ends up in singing in a seedy
bar, where tabloid boss Jimmy Mistry (Manish Chaudhary) finds and claims her.
Johnny and his
friend/sidekick Chiman (Satyadeep) Mishra) are taken under the wing of rival
tabloid baron and wheeler-dealer Kaizad Khambatta (Karan Johar), who uses them
as a front to run his night club Bombay Velvet.
Jimmy sends Rosie to spy on Johnny and steal an all-important photo
negative (a very clumsy plot device), but he pompously declares “Meri hai” and she genuinely falls in
love with him.
As the rather tepid
love story pans out, in the background, there is talk of the development of
Nariman Point and building the World Trade Centre which involved massive
corruption and the silencing of the protests by mill workers. All this would
barely interest Mumbai residents, people outside the city, not at all; Kashyap is so tied up with the look
(spectacular) and sound (brilliant) of the film, that everything else takes a
backseat. Sadly, the central character, Johnny, turns out to be wishy-washy and
not one the viewer cares about. (Now
compare with Vijay in Deewar and see
how good writing is more important than technique.) Ranbir Kapoor is all
energy, bravado and leer, but to no avail.
Anushka Sharma’s wardrobe and styling are more impressive than her
stereotypical singer-moll part.
The romance is
without passion and the political string-pulling insipid. Good performances by
the intense Satyadeep Misra, the stuffy Manish Chaudhary, Kay Kay Menon (as a
cop), are wasted. Karan Johar is a
revelation as the slimy Khambatta—in the film’s only funny scene, when Johnny
says something stupid, he leaves the room, and has a fit of giggles.
The film could do
with a lot more character development, tension and some humour, since the
show-offy technique by itself accomplishes little.
Labels: Cinemaah
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