Good but not great. Review on Kahaani

After having so many good responses over Kahaani, I managed to view it "somewhere in excellent print". Making a suspense thriller is something which needs tremendous balance of mind, logic and presentation skills. If these things are not met properly, it is bound to have a very bad outcome. And if it goes well, it is bound to shock the public and outcome is always good. In nutshell, making a suspense thriller is not an easy job. My this observation can be fitted on almost all successful and failed suspense movies and programmes. We still remember Byomkesh Bakshi, Adalat(Old one) and Police Public. But this memorable list is not so long. In all these successful cases of suspense thrillers, there are some commanalities:

They are never forgotten, they told story with excellent presentation, logic never went tacky and final knitting went well. Kahaani took the risk, and did the job to large extent very well, but at some places it did logical mistakes in performance and direction.

Story and Screenplay: As per rule, the story of suspense thriller is never hinted, and I will follow it. Anyway, Vidya Bagchi, the protagonist, lands in India in search of her hubby who had left her in UK. After getting down to India, she directly goes to Kali Ghat Police station of Kolkata and there she gets a supporter, a suave cop, who works like the Sarthi of Arjuna, to help Arjun(Vidya) get her target. And during this all, one after another dirty thruths surface up, leading to a highly shocking climax scene.

The screenplay has been excellent, and the movie keeps you glued to your seat. Every frame coming after the present one, shocks the viewer with some revelation, which suggest that Vidya Bagchi had no husband or had hallucination of having husband. But she was pregnant! This particular psyche develops gradually and strongly with the viewer, that after seeing the climax scene, the viewer is taken aback with shock, satisfaction as well as dissatisfaction.

Performances: The hero of the movie is Vidya Balan as Vidya Bagchi. As a distressed wife, she plays to the perfection in almost every scene. You can read it exactly what she wanted to show, a distressed wife, having something running always in her mind, and some sort of determination, which audience understand for long as for finding her husband out. Vidya Balan like female actor has become perhaps one of the most important aspects of present of Hindi cinema, an extremely talented actor, who unlike rest of the female actor, does not depend upon the skin show or chikni chameli or Munni or ride success on the shoulder of some male lead.but redefine everything on her own terms, and bring back the respect of women on the screen and in the eyes of audience, who make this society too. Not just that, actor like her are becoming saviour of good cinema, content based quality cinema and giving the bollywood an opportunity to not end as a joker with crappy movie like Ra.One or the array of remakes where one feels as if people there have stopped imagining. She did not need 7 different gateups to cover her acting lapses, as in single get up she pardoned.many khoons maaf!

Based this, the film boasts some actors from Bangal itself, whom I don't know. But movie making is like making a tasty dish, where not only the main ingredient but even portion of masala, water, heating all matter a lot. .just like preparing a really tasty Mutton, Rohu Fish fry in Sarson or Kathal ki Sabzi.something which you can bring from the marke but only the experts can make the best out of that meat or Kathal. The actors were exactly like that. The Saviour cop played bycan't prepare Parambrata Chatterjee was a great support. People these days are talking like a lot about him. However I found the contract killer Bob's performance more terrific, and more substantial in the movie. He was damn cold blooded where instead of giving life insurance, he was earning from taking lives.while his LIC boss though him always as a poor lethargic LIC agent! what a performance man. The performance of the IB cop, blocking Vidya and later asking her to do his job, left something wanting. He was portrayed as a blunt guy, without any proper logic. I have friends in the same area, but they are damn calm and cold blooded. They are never jumping like langoors and blabbing anything. They are powerful no doubt as even PM's security is in their hand, but they manage it different way. The director needed maturity in showing it. Its not the actor's fault at all if he is asked to do so.

An amazing aspect of this entire movie has been that with a limited starcast, the movie worked on base which had a large canvas. And everything fitted perfectly.

Direction, Cinematography and technical: Now when talking about the Director, I am really amazed to see that some one who has directed crap like Aladdin and Home Delivery, can make such a good movie. He has done good job, and kept the pace terrific. The biggest hero of every movie is its director. And this man emerges as a hero. He has selected a good storyline and the best part of the movie has been the way story has been told and presented. He displayed that how to make a good if not excellent fish fry or Mutton or Kathal or even a good tea! Very intelligently he opted for a base of Kolkata, a city, which is old, chaotic, having British time legendary buildings, where a polite culture prevails, the "Bhadra Des". A city, which is much more mixed than any Delhi, Bombay or Chennai or Bangalore, but with much larger heart and acceptance for all. A metro, which definitely got the first of all fastest transportations from trams to metro rails, but still it prefers to sleep during 2-4:00 PM after having lunch, and roam on the ghats of Ganga in nights. And amid this all chaos and simultaneous lax, run several stories, Kahaani is one of them. The director intelligently used the mysterious, chaotic yet lovel appeal of Kolkata, which hardly any other city could give. However he has his part of mistakes. Specially with the walking style of Vidya Balan who exerted a bit more than required, on her movement and sometimes looked never behaving like a pregnant lady! The similar kind of logical errors have been done other places too .how can one fool the strongest intelligence department of nation.did not they care to examine the past of Vidya Bagchi, her passport, her martial status etc? Today it is done within 10 minutes. Here the director looked headless. Also the end of the movie looked stitching stories forcibly. Sujoy Ghosh forgets the theory of "tip of iceberg" while making a suspense, where you need to give tip of iceberg at regular intervals to give the ultimate shock in the climax.

On camera front, the movie is the 5 star stuff. They all knew that Kolkata can never look impressive in daylight and looks like a dream in night, when the city resonates into various types of light, all adding to its elegance. This particular thing has been used a lot and beauty and appeal of every frame has been increased with this clever opting of lighting, It is most apparent in the last scene of Durga Idol procession, and the chaos in which Vidya Bagchi is lost.

Songs: Usha Uththup's Introduction to Kolkata Song is excellent. She is terrific. Amitabh's ekla Cholo is good to ears, but none of these two songs are complete in the movie.

(Continued in comment section).