| << Newer | Older >> |
on 2007/9/7 22:56:03
Darling
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Actors: Fardeen Khan , Esha Deol , Isha Koppikar
For a director who publicly professes to be a 'genre filmmaker', who has provided a common larger visual and aural tenor to almost all his recent works regardless of the subject, this film is alarming to say the least.
The artless aesthetics of the zoom, lensed up till the nostril, and a background score preferred on Navratri nights, will grate on your senses by the fifth film.
Especially if the first concerned the Mafia (Sarkar), the second an emotionally skewed love story (Nishabd), the third and fourth a so-called tribute to fisticuffs of the '70s (Shiva and Aag). And none of that mattered much to the overall mood. This one relates to the house of horror, or not quite. It isn't handled too differently.
The scene that should concern us at present is when a dead-colleague's father visits her boss's home, in search of his missing daughter. The boss's wife is around. The three are in the same room, as the wife finally suspects her husband could, at one point, have been dating the dead girl (which is true). The camera frantically swings from one close-up to the other, and then back again, constantly re-establishing the said scene. The musical score jars with the lunatic movement. Within a few seconds, you could bemoan how Varma's shot-takes may have degenerated to sub-levels of Ekta Kapoor's evening soaps.
You can also sense a director's under-confidence with his finished craft among signs of a producer gradually taking over. In this case: T-Series, and their poster-coy Himesh, in an obviously inserted bathing song; the pedestrian crowd-pulling stunt yet untouched in a Varma film. Never mind the larger concept yet.
Fardeen plays a corporate exec in a company that "makes no products". He is in an extra-marital affair with his co-worker (Deol). She is pregnant. He wants the child aborted. They get into a scuffle. She dies. And returns later to haunt him as a spirit: Bhoo…
The script may reek of spook. The film intentionally doesn't. It's a comedy; the kinds that work on the irony of a dead, invisible mistress, rapping her man silly, as he makes out with his wife.
The humour from the horror is obvious; except, to the gentleman behind the camera. He still secretly pans behind window-panes, hides around closets, and suddenly shoots the screen at you. This ain't no Bhoot. No one will be scared.
With little else to chew around the confusion of genres, you make merry thereafter with a hammy 'pati', the screechy 'patni' (Koppikar), and the deathly, naughty 'woh', as Dar-lingers on and on and on...
Varma's idea, an underdeveloped two-line thought, like many of his own movies, or ones directed by his protgs lately, would have suited a 10-minute short film.
He already runs a horror-franchise (Darna Mana Hai; Darna Zaroori Hai). A few more such could have made for a third installment. Someone's evidently just in a hurry to shoot. Shoot!
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.
| Poster | Thread |
|---|
