Monday, August 15, 2016
Rustom
Once Upon A
Time
The one good
thing about Rustom is that Akshay
Kumar is slowly moving towards playing more mature characters, and the chiseled
dignity he brings to Rustom Pavri suits him, even if it means he wears a
gleaming white uniform all the time—in jail too.
That’s about
all—the rest of the film is a goofy version of the Nanavati case of 1959, which
was played out in tawdry, tabloid-y melodrama, resulting in the abolishment of
the jury system. Taking the core of the idea of a naval officer killing his
wife’s lover, Desai throws sense and logic to the winds, concentrating instead
on period details—how many Parsi garages must have been raided to get all those
impeccable vintage cars! Still, he cannot get any degree of authenticity in the
Parsi backdrop, or get actors to speak with the right accents.
What is
vaguely disturbing is that even in 2016, the director cannot show a woman
willingly having an affair. In the 1963 film Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke, based on the same case, the wife had her
drink spiked; in Rustom, the wife
Cynthia (Ileana D’Cruz) needs a convoluted build-up to fall into playboy Vikram
Makhija’s (Arjan Bajwa) arms. She spends the rest of the film weeping and moaning
with guilt.
Rustom Pavri
shoots Vikram and calmly spends time in jail, reading and playing chess with
the investing officer Vincent Lobo (Pavan Malhotra), while outside, the Parsi
editor of tabloid, Eruch Billimoria
(Kumud Mishra, miscast) whips up support for a fellow Parsi and sells more
papers.
The most
superfluous character in the film is Vikram’s foxy sister Priti (Esha Gupta)
unintentionally comic in her flapper wardrobe, long cigarette holder, red lips
and moll-like demeanour.
Almost
everybody in the film—except Rustom Pavri—is ridiculous in some way—either
overacting, or overdressed. The
courtroom scenes with a comic prosecutor (Sachin Khedekar) and sneering judge
(Anang Desai) are much too theatrical.
Desai adds
another patriotic angle to the story, but at the core of the real case and this
film, is the fact that people who flock outside the courtroom with pro-Pavri
banners, think it is alright for man to kill a man who laid a hand on his
‘property’—in this instance, his wife—and that a cad like Vikram deserved to
die. The morality remains warped—then and now.
Labels: Cinemaah
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