The bUSINeSS of UNfINISheD LIVeS

D-DAy

STARRING: rishi Kapoor, Irrfan, Arjun rampal, huma qureshi, Shruti haasan

DIRECTOR: Nikhil Advani HHHHH

Fragrant pencils and the stench of blood... Irrfan’s character identifies flavoured pencils with his undying love for his son even when his life is soaked in the blood of traitors. Funny how two entirely disparate experiences can co-exist in a work of art!

And make no mistake, Nikhil Advani’s sixth feature film, about the enforced extradition of a dawood-like gangster, is an acutely accomplished work of art. but what haunts most is the love between a mysterious Indian intelligence agent and a Pakistani sex worker, both wounded and scarred for life. She in ways that we can see, he more intangibly. but pain, at the end of the day, is pain.

Shot in expertly constructed brothel sets with the crowded colours of lurid sex suggesting the tragedy of lives lived in borrowed beds, the scenes between Arjun rampal and Shruti haasan are punctured by piercing silences and a haunting melody about love, loss and incomplete lives, sung by rekha bharadwaj.

Later, the girl is tortured to painful death by a sadistic butcher, gleefully played by Chandan roy Sanyal.

In one of the most innovative editing techniques seen in recent times, we see the scarred prostitute’s torture and death through Arjun’s eyes as though he were there when it happened.

The love story could have been the entire script of the film. but D-Day - odd title since the antagonist is no more named dawood - has a lot more to say, and it says it with an enrapturing elan that invites us into its midst, without gimmicks.

The story of rAw agents on a mission in Pakistan to nab “India’s most wanted” is told in a tone that favours a detached distance from the proceedings while ensuring we see each character’s life in prismatic close-ups.

Every character in D-Day, even the dreaded bhai, is a prisoner of his own lost dreams and aspirations.

The rAw heroes are thrown in our face without elaborate preamble. The very attractive huma qureshi as the rAw agent Zoya has her personal life in shambles. but we never see her unhappy husband. we only hear himspeaking about their distressed relationship, in the voice of the very talented raj Kumar yadav.

Every character, visible or invisible, speaks to us in urgent desperate tones. These are people whose dreams can never come true.

As the plot progresses, it gets only more intriguing until from Karachi we reach, breathlessly, the Indian side of the border where rishi Kapoor gives a sneering speech on the Indian government’s inability to control terrorists and terrorism.

This is as good a place as any to say D-Day is crammed with remarkable actors furnishing the anxious proceedings with a riveting life-force. rishi as the gangster is, of course, first-rate. when is he anything less?

The other actors too are entirely in their element. Arjun and Shruti’s tragic love story is played out in muted shades. Arjun seems to become a more evolved actor with every role. As for Irrfan, his portrayal of a man on a suicidal mission trying to hold on every pore of this beautifully crafted saga of a love so infinite and so forbidden that it seems to scoff at cruel fate and brutal destiny while carving out a craggy jagged path for the lovers. vikramaditya motwane’s storytelling is like a coiled twirling stairway to the heart of his irreconcilable protagonists. The film’s muted silences suggest a deep connectivity between pain and love.

Sadly, in the midst all the underlying conflicts, poor o henry’s story is almost forgotten. The leaf-leitmotif shyly shows up at the end, making a hasty entry not too convincingly.

S UBHASH K. J HA

to the memory of his wife and son is so vivid you can touch his anguish.

Newcomer Sriswara is extremely credible as Irrfan’s wife, while huma is appealing and effective. Akaash dahiya as the fourth rAw team-member is so much on edge, you want to hold him back from toppling over.

The cinematography by Tushar Kanti ray uses cluttered garish spaces to create a sense of spiritual emptiness.

with this one film, Advani joins the ranks of the most accomplished young filmmakers of hindi cinema and by far Karan Johar’s dharma Productions proudest product.

S UBHASH K. J HA