I did not go for Dhobi ghat in its opening week , the general reaction was “ yaar samajh nai aayi” , “ kya banayi hai?” , “ thik hai” even the critics gave a precautionary sign of “ Go but don’t blame us if you don’t like it !
Finally I went and I realized why’ Mumbai diaries’ is getting mixed reviews. Watching is this movie is like reading a fine piece of poetry, and not everybody enjoys reading, because reading is a solitary habit and very few people enjoy solitude these days, very few people actually like silence around them.
It’s not a plain right in your face kind of story , but it is in a fluid form; it slowly and gradually engulfs you , a hypothetical medium in which you start living in during the ninety minutes it is told.
The characters don’t have a beginning or end but they are just pages carelessly torn out of a diary, they don’t have stories to tell but incidents, they are not larger than life and they are not pointlessly miniscule, they are perfect, they are real.
Munna is a dhobi during the day and a rat killer during the night, with dreams in his eyes to become an actor meets Shai a banker from New York now in Mumbai on a sabbatical, Shai stumbles on Arun a recluse painter seeking inspiration from the tapes of Yasmeen.
Prateik as Munna is innocent, young, naïve and likeable, His small gestures makes shows the detail that he has put in his performance, Monica Dogra as Shai is fresh and delivers effortlessly, Amir khan as Arun is probably the weakest link amongst otherwise great performances, he is awkward at times and not very convincing in his portrayal of the recluse painter. But its Kriti Malhotra as Yasmin in a heartbreaking performance that takes your breath away, talking to a camera, and her excellent portrayal of a lonely young woman has a haunting quality.
Tushar Kanti ray’s moody cinematography gives an additional lyrical quality to the visuals. The other two invisible characters in the movie are Mumbai and the season of rains. Mumbai like the woman living next to Arun’s apartment is a mute spectator, who silently observes events, incidents, accidents’ happening in front of her but stays mum, she never speaks, just listens and we mostly speculate that she feels. Dhobi ghat brings romance back to our lives and it does so with the help of rains, many directors have used rains in many movies, but never has it been used so effectively, that it also becomes a character, a part of the narrative. Romanticism is everywhere in the movie , it’s the dream in which Munna lives unless his dream is shattered in the end , or when Arun finishes viewing Yasmeen tapes, or when Yasmeen writes the final letter to her brother.
Gustavo Santallo’s soundtrack is very soothing, he teaches us how to use our classical music so affectively, what he does with just an acoustic guitar, we fail miserably with our synthesizers. Music in Dhobighat never overpowers but very subtly it aids the visuals, it engraves them.
The only flaw that is there in the movie is that at times it feels that it is dragging, though great acting in those scenes hides it, but it could have been more suitably edited.
All said , Dhobi ghat is one of those movies whom DVD’s you buy and give a nice corner on your DVD shelf next to a ‘ Chunking express’ and on one of those days when you are in a random mood , with nothing else to do, you play it ; again and alone…..
