Kaagaz movie review: Pankaj Tripathi tries his best to infuse life into a film killed by cliches – bollywood
Returning to filmmaking after nearly 5 years, Satish Kaushik has made a movie fairly not like those he has made earlier than. Kaagaz can simply be known as his finest work until date however he’s nonetheless taking part in catch-up in a style that has lengthy left behind the times of melodramatic background rating.
Kaagaz is the true life story of man extraordinaire, Lal Bihari Mritak, performed right here as Bharat Lal Mritak by the ever flawless Pankaj Tripathi. Bharat Lal is a sort hearted, loveable band participant from a small village in Uttar Pradesh, who believed in sluggish residing earlier than millennials made it modern. Content material together with his tiny store, a candy house with a loving spouse and a small son, he has zero aspirations of adjusting it for something. The opening scene the place Bharat captures a mouse in his store and has a chat with it earlier than setting it free, does an excellent job of creating him as a person of pure intent. Pankaj, inside simply a few minutes, melts his method into your coronary heart. Sadly, that is additionally the place the movie’s heartwarming storytelling peaks.
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When Bharat’s spouse, who’s barely extra hopeful of a greater life, asks him to increase his enterprise with a financial institution mortgage, he realises he has a peculiar downside. He’s lifeless, on paper. Unknown to him, his conniving aunt and her sons acquired him declared lifeless, usurping the property that was legally his. Thus started Bharat’s decade-long, gruelling combat in opposition to a corrupt system, forms, his family and their greed. Nonetheless, these bigger foes crop up a lot later within the movie, initially his greatest enemies are the village children and idle males who tease him and name him a ‘ghost’.
The movie has many foes, albeit of its personal making. Satish’s course and various cliched selections push the movie to its untimely demise. All of the goodwill that was raked within the first jiffy is wasted with an merchandise music that has sleazy males and zoom ins on Sadeepa Dhar’s waist. The evil chachi will get her personal Komolika-esque sound results, and a useless commentary by Satish runs via each scene, explaining a reasonably easy plot a lot that it appears insulting to the audiences’ mind. Morose music performs at cue throughout emotional scenes and a buffalo grunts throughout a slightly amusing second.
And regardless of all this, the movie continues to be watchable solely as a result of efficiency of Pankaj Tripathi. It’s nonetheless a shock to observe him slip into any milieu, any character with buttery ease. From a sassy gun-slinging gang chief in Ludo to the sweetest father in Gunjan Saxena, Pankaj has confirmed again and again that there’s actually nothing that he can not do. Because the small city man with a coronary heart of gold, Bharat Lal was by no means an enormous problem for an actor of his capabilities. Pankaj performs him with kindness, mania, rage and harm, all in equal measure.
Whereas Pankaj Tripathi could also be a marvel amongst actors, it’s these round him that disappoint. From the spouse to the chachi to the cousins, politicians, journalists or pals, nobody is given a job price biting into. It additionally comes as a reduction as a result of not one of the supporting actors might have been in a position to carry the load both. Their jokes don’t land, the extra emotional scenes don’t impress and the spouse’s UP accent retains taking part in disguise and search.
Kaagaz is clearly behind the occasions in a style that has seen much better examples as many as 10 years in the past. The closest relative I might suppose for it should be Salman Khan’s socially woke up movies equivalent to Bajrangi Bhaijaan or Sultan. Their coronary heart could also be in the precise place however the juvenile and cliched course selections mar their possibilities of greatness.
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