CORRUPT . ION HURTS EVERYONE.

Mana. It is Bhardwaj playing theJana Gana Mana.

A pity, he sacrifices the opportunity to tell a beautifuland tender love story about three wounded fracturedbroken characters for the sake of a baggy ode to desh bhakti replete with a climax on top of a precariously compromised. wooden bridgethat David Lean would have used as a dress rehearsal for The BridgeOn The Riverf<.wai.

Aerial shots of WW2 war planes swooping down on the natives are so clumsily done they are proof of how far FX-driven Indian cinema lags behind its Hollywood counterparts, and why.

Peel away the layers of self-referential nationalism, and we are left with a luminous lovestory, adishy desi version of David Lean's Ryan's Daughterand VijayAnand's Guide about a capricious seductress in a committedrelationship who strays into a passionate liaison with a near-stranger who is way out of her socialleague. Indeed, the most masterly portions of the narrative are those where Kangana andShahid are shown slogging through stretches of slush and marsh land accompanied by aJapanese POW.

Kangana and Shahid are extraordinarily at-home in expressing the eruption of unpremeditated passion. Their scenestogether are magically shot by cinematographer Pankaj Kumar and are elevated further to a level of liberating lyricism by Vishal Bhardwaj's serene background score.

A pity Shahid and Kangana's time together is rationed. It ends with the Japanese soldier (played with gratifying earnestness by Soturo Kawaguchi) begging to be freed to go home to his mother.

Exactly our feelings.

SubhashKJha

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