Zen and the Art of Hollywood Replication. Review on Paap

“I made Paap not to express a creative urge but to take full control of the production of the film”. Probably the only quality Pooja Bhatt, in her new avatar as artist, has is a little bit of truthfulness. ‘A little bit’, because in the same MTV interview she went on to say “Paap is not a copy of Witness. Only the basic plot idea is similar”.

They don’t come any phonier than this. Having watched Peter Weir’s Witness just a few days before suffering Paap, I can assure you that Pooja Bhatt’s potential lies in the art of replication. Paap copies Witness in camera angles, camera movements, action, dialogue (often crisply translated), acting and much more. What it fails to copy are the plot ideas. Witness was a taut thriller as well as a heart-warming movie about discovering a new culture and about social taboos and suppressed emotions. Paap superficially touches all, but falls short of looking deeply at these facets of the humanity.

A girl from an isolated community goes to a large city. While coming back, the child with her becomes a witness to a murder. The murderers plan to kill them and the heroic police officer in charge of the case. All three escape to the isolated community, where the film turns into an emotional drama.

After being presented this viciously copied story by her father, Pooja Bhatt further indulges in further vandalism not by employing herself as the director and glamour-struck wannabes as the lead actors. Harrison Ford is replaced by John Abraham and his bare chest. Kelly McGillis is replaced by Udita Goswami who is a little more tolerable, even with her single-expression repertoire (you can imagine how bad John Abraham is, in one of the worst performances I’ve seen in recent times). One is surprised how even Mohan Agashe is reduced to a caricature of a wounded and phobic man.

To add to your disappointment, the cinematography with its lack of innovation and perception hardly does justice to the serene locations of Spiti. While the sites just beg to be framed, Anshuman Mahaley’s camera wakes up to the beauty just about once in a while. I never thought I’d miss Santosh Sivan of all people. I was proved wrong.

The only redeeming factor here is the music. The three songs are definitely memorable. The best of them is Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s Man Ki Lagan, a masterpiece beyond doubt. It reassures you that Nusrat’s music didn’t die with him. It deeply touches you not with sentimentality, but with the sublime beauty of sounds absorbing each other in an uplifting harmony. For the first time since Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Michael Brook created Longing, has the sufi qawwali genre reached paradise again. Garaj Baras and Intezaar have fantastic lyrics and make for great listening.

The directorial style seems like that of cut-and-paste and fill-in-the-gaps. In case you have watched Witness, even the old cliché – “what is good is not original and what is original is not good” fails to apply. If you want a worthwhile experience, avoid Paap, watch the original.