Cine Talk Epitomising urban anonymity

Film: KarthikCallingKarthik

Cast: Farhan Akhtar, Deepika Padukone

Director: Vijay Lalvani

Desolation is a distant cousin to suburban seclusion. And Karthik Calling Karthik is an interesting if flawed fable of the damned.

The protagonist is Karthik (Farhan Akhtar), so timid he could merge into the woodwork of his office if only the decor was not so much glass.

Karthik is bullied by his boss (Ram Kumar), sniggered at by his smarter colleagues and absentmindedly ignored by the beauty in the workplace whom Karthik gazes at sideways and writes scores of unsent e-mails to. She’s the unattainable beauty.

This is the world of ‘Rocket Singh’ without the turban and the placidity. While Shimit Amin’s Rocket Singh - Salesman Of The Year was about an office-goer who craved for acceptance, Karthik just wants to be less unhappy in his space. It’s not too much to ask for. But who’s listening? Except a voice on the phone that sounds suspiciously like Karthik’s to his own ear.

The build-up of Karthik’s dreary world captures the claustrophobia of suburban existence without forgetting to add humour to the proceedings. The moments between Karthik and the gregarious Shonali (Deepika) have that touch of lively realism taken from lives we’ve known, lived and somewhere tried to reject. However, the dialogues between the couple try too hard to be ‘cool’.

The relationship that Karthik develops with Shonali is far outdistanced in intensity by the one that he develops with the Chinese phone set. And after a while the ‘extended monologues’ begin to lose their credibility.

But hold on. Debutant director Vijay Lalwani, selfassured and apparently fully conscious of where he’s taking his story, gives us a second-half that is gut-wrenching in its portrayal of the individual as an island.

To escape the dictatorial and tyrannical voice on

Film: HelloZindagi

Cast: Mrunmayee Lagoo, Milind Gunajee, Kitu Gidwani, Neena Gupta, Kanwaljeet

Singh; Director: Raja Unnithan

A rebellious teenage daughter Kavita (Mrunmayee Lagoo) of a traumatised couple doesn’t know what to do with her life. So she takes off on a journey away from home with a lonely, neglected but brave the phone, Karthik buys a ticket to an unknown city which to our visual delight, turns out to be Kochi. Karthik rents a modest near-dingy room and begins life anew as a battered man seeking supreme anonymity with no telephone lines to break his selfimposed deathly stillness of existence. middle-aged woman to Goa where she saves turtles... and herself.

The second movement of the quietly simmering plot comes to a poignant if faltering halt in a city whose tranquility the cinematographer Sanu Verghese embraces by a rejection of the urban chaos. However, the revelation on Karthik’s psychological condition surprises no one except Karthik himself, and least of all his shrink Shefali Shah.

Karthik Calling Karthik is a gripping jigsaw, piecing together a mind that plays games with itself.

The winner is destiny. The pace is consciously sluggish suggesting the deep-rooted association of a vigour-less existence with the quality of life that cities offer you in exchange for a comfortable flat in a techno-suffused surrounding.

Farhan, the life and breath of the proceedings, epitomizes urban anonymity in his body language, speech and hesitant attempts to reach out to a world that has no patience with the over-sensitive.

Farhan’s is indeed a super-confident performance as a man lacking self-confidence. The film itself doesn’t lack self-assurance. But the absence of what one may call an energetic exterior could well be mistaken by some viewers as ingrained inertia, a malaise that the film’s protagonist suffers from. Do not mistake the man for the plot.

Kavita goes home redeemed. We are not so sure about ourselves. We remain partly involved but largely distanced from this ambitious but flawed look at life through the eyes of teen rebellion.

Director Raja Unninathan has his heart in the right place. He creates a world of gossipy, sweaty parties, tacky repartees and one-night stands for Kavita. But the words sound more like replications of the emotional outbursts associated with the generation gap rather than actual situations created in a specific crisis.

A more authentic parent-child crisis would be the one in Wake Up Sid or better still the television soap Ladies Special where two very talented actors Shilpa Tulaskar and Sandeep Kulkarni played harassed parents grappling with a rebellious teenage daughter. We empathised with their helplessness.

In Hello Zindagi Neena Gupta and Kanwaljeet Singh, specially the latter, are in fine form as Kavita’s parents. But the writing constantly lets all the actors down. The one performer who manages to hold her head above the material provided is Kitu Gidwani. playing the dignified unloved but outwardly well-to-do wife, Gidwani epitomizes grace under pressure.

Her section of the film with her indifferent though not cruel husband (Amit Behl) has some interesting moments – such as when Gidwani goes into the kitchen to get coffee made by her husband and then pours it quietly down the sink.

Gidwani’s journey to Goa with the rebellious Kavita is charted with affection. Very rarely do we get to see a movie so gentle and warm about female bonding over differing generations. What Gidwani shares with the debutante Mrunmayee Lagoo echoes Jessica Tandy’s bonding with Bridget

Fonda

Except that Gidwani and the girl don’t go skinny-dipping. The blackest spot in the film is its lack of sexual energy. The characters are almost invariably frigid in their thoughts and desires. A thwarted indecisiveness runs across the narrative profile rendering the characters weak and unconvincing.

The save-the-turtles message at the end seems forced.

Nonetheless there’s enough tenderness and warmth in the relationships shared by Mrunmayee with her screen-dad Kanwaljeet and Kitu Gidwani to make the film worth a watch.

Hello Zindagi doesn’t bowl you over. But it makes you smile even when the debutant director displays that trite and selfconscious social purpose that makes the film look like a documentary on how to save teenagers and turtles when they don’t want to be saved without drowning in the attempt.