DHOBHI GHAT

REALITY SUCKS !!!!!!!!!!

Someone asked an artist,which is your best painting,and he replied,the next ! This realy applies to Amir Khan.............he never stops surprising you,with a movie better than his last best! and he has done it again in Dhobhi Ghat.Though the movie is the directorial debut of his wife,Kiran Rao,and even though he has been raving about it being the first movie where a wife,directed her husband,one can clearly see impressions of Amir's direction,besides his mega prescence,all over the movie.

Dhobhi Ghat flopped miserably at the box office,and wasnt liked much by most, mainly because it was unlike the routine,Bollywood movies,simple.stark,hiting right in the face and sans all masala................even documentaries are more glamorous these days.It was extremely bland with no glamour or melodrama with verything being underplayed,Just a few routine days,potrayed besutifully with innovative methods,with no begining,climax or end...................probably not even a message.It was just a peep in the life of Mumbai dwellers,and their romance with struggle and survival.Hence aptly called,Dhobhi Ghat,Bombay Diaries.

The movie revolved around four charecters,Amir,a divorced painter,the dhobhi boy-the local hunk,a lady photographer and the previous inmate of Amirs house.Amir,a loner ,is a pinter and keeps moving to variou localities in suberbs of Mumbai,to get into a new mood and environement ,and ideas for his paintings.He meets this lady photographer at his art exhibiyion,and she accompanies him home,to spend th night with him.Prateek Babbar has played Munna,the young Dhobi,who came as a child from Bihar and stayed back forever .Besides being the local dhobi boy,he aspires to make it to the big screen some day and is also the popular young stud of the local area,who is used by middle aged housewives,to fulfill their sexual fantacies.The lady photographer moves in the same locality for her photoshoots and befriends Munna to use him as the local guide.She even shoots a portfolio for him,and treats him as a friend to the extent that he falls madly in love with her,but never collects the courage to express it,and in fact even helps her to find Amir, who doesnt seem very interested in her

The fourth and the most important charecter,the previous inmate of Amirs house,is a young village girl,who makes her appearance in the movie only in flashback.Amir finds three vidio cassetes in the house,which are of the previou inmates,nad it turns out that they were letters in form of vedeo recorded narrations,from tht girl to her brother.Its a very innovative method,used in the movie,to highlight the life and fate of innumerable girls who marry and reach Mumbai,to discover that they have been cheated,and have no option but to either live in misery or to commit suicide.The story unfolds as Amir watches the video cassetes,and reveals that this young girl from Malihabad,a village near Lucknow in UP,gets married to a loacl guy,settled in Mumbai,and reaches Bombay,to discover that she is the second wife of this man,who has no time for her and rarely visits her ,pushing her in a state of depressing solitude taht drives her to commit suicide by hnaging from the cieling fan

In a short span of 90 minutes,the movie,ruthlessly bares the underbelley of Mumbai,highlightinf every aspect of the city,from aspiring younsters to shattered dreams,love,romance,marriage, divorse ,sex and one night stands,the mafia,drug pedling,gang wars and murders which always turn into accidants.The life of suberburbs and of slum dwellers,explotation,unexpressed love and fraudulant marriages.Above all this,the movie ,very succesfully depicts the individualistic existance of a bombayite with a each one to his or her own life and sab chalta hai attitude.And all the dark shades of the city,are beutifully expressed in a very subtle,matter of fact manner,with the cries of anguish potrayed as helpless silence.The speechless silence is often so tactfully exhibited,that it is more deafening than the shrillest of cries.

The movie appears as an english movie,not only with the fair amount of english conversation pushed in to bring authenticity,but also by underplaying the complete narration,no sets,natural settings,ordinary clothes,no songs and superb editing and cinematography.Back ground score befits the storyline and direction is good,Amir as always is at his all time best and Prateek Babbar,Has not only done justice to his role,but even to his mother,Smita Patils name.He is probably the next star kid to hit the big screen and has all potentials,in looks,physique and histrionics to do well.The other acters have done thier bits well too and overall ,inspite of being slow and dull at places,the movie succeeds in its mission of highlighting the ethos of life of a common man in Bombay

Dhobhi ghat is a sad story of realities of Bomaby life,where there is endless darkness under all the glamour of the city and the constant struggle for survival and sucess.A city,where life goes on at its own pace and form,at its own terms and price.A must see for all Amir fans and lovers of realistic cinema

Dr Sanjay Kapoor