Dor
I don’t see many Hindi movies — and I watch even fewer Bollywood movies. If you’re wondering what the difference is between the two, you need to see Dor. It falls into the slender but cherished list of films that do this country proud — the kind of cinema that is represented at its peak by this year’s official Indian entry to the Academy Awards, Rang De Basanti.
Dor is a simple film. I think it’s Nagesh Kukunoor’s third (or fourth?) film. It so happens I haven’t seen his earlier films, and wasn’t particularly keen to see them either. I’ve seen bits here and there on TV repeats, but they didn’t seem compelling enough to watch from start to finish on DVD or screen — and I wouldn’t do him or any other filmmaker the injustice of judging their work based on a few minutes glimpsed on TV between commercials and distractions.
I saw Dor as it should be seen — as any good film should be seen — on the big screen. And it was the best Hindi film I’ve seen for a while (although, as I said before, I don’t see very many). The film itself has a simple enough storyline: it is really just about two young women, one an independent-minded Muslim woman living in a remote village in Himachal Pradesh, the other a bashful young newlywed in a small Rajasthani town. Their husbands both leave home to work in Saudia Arabia, with the promise of returning soon to their beloved wives with much-needed earnings.
They never do. Return, that is. In fact, both men exit their homes, and the film, never to return. What does reach their wives is news of a tragedy. Apparently, they were both sharing an apartment together in Saudi, and one of them fell from a balcony during an argument. The other man has been arrested and charged with his death, and under Saudi law, he is to be executed within two months. The only way he can be reprieved is if the widow of the victim signs a mercy petition.
So begins the journey of one woman to seek out the other, a complete stranger, and attempt to obtain the forgiveness needed to save her own husband’s life. Gul Panag plays the Muslim wife whose husband is condemned to die for a murder he probably didn’t even commit. Armed with only a photograph of her husband and his dead flatmate, she sets out to find the other man’s wife, played by Ayeshia Takia. En route, she meets a beharupiya, a Rajasthani actor-trickster, played by Shreyas Talpade, who cheats her, steals from her, and then returns, abashed, to aid her in her seemingly impossible quest.
Shreyas Talpade plays a character so different from his highly lauded turn in his debut film Iqbal (also by Kukunoor) that you really sit up and take note of this amazingly talented young actor. Most of his role consists of mimicry, endless imitations of various classic and contemporary Hindi film stars and singers, an endless litany of pitch-perfect take-offs that would win him the Johnny Lever Soundalike Award, if such an award existed. But more amazingly, he goes beyond this mimicry to add dimensions of vulnerability, affection, even unrequited (and unrequitable) love that help round out his much-too-convenient character into a three-dimensional personality. It’s quite obvious that his character is written in and the role padded out by writer-director Kukunoor to balance out the otherwise one-track monotonous storyline of the two women. But Talpade’s talent, and Kukunoor’s deft touch, turn this deus ex machina into a necessary angel. You can watch the film for Talpade alone, and it’s total paisa vasool. This actor does Maharashtra, nahi, yaar, India proud.
But the real surprise packages of the film are Ayesha Takia and Gul Panag. Both women outdo one another in sheer quality of performance. Gul Panag turns in a performance that, for me at least, matches the cinematic economy, physical ease, and eloquent silences of one of my most admired movie roles of recent years — the luminous discovery Catalina Sandino Moreno in Maria Full of Grace. And for me, that’s saying a lot! Panag is magnificent, so perfectly attuned to her character’s strength, stong-will, uprightness and delicately maintained feminine sensitivity, that it’s hard to believe the numerous newspaper reports claiming that she wasn’t able to perform to director Kukunoor’s satisfaction during the filming. Her voice was apparently dubbed by Executive Producer Elahi Naptoola, also as an outcome of these problems, which is a pity, because while the dubbing is adequate, even well done, it would have rounded off a great performance to hear her own voice deliver Kukunoor’s immaculately crafted dialogues.
Ayesha Takia marvels in her role as first a bashful yet love-struck young bride, later as a shattered widow, and finally as a woman discovering her own self-esteem and identity. She’s a treat to watch, and the moment when she dances in the bylane to a Bollywood song playing on a transistor radio, glancing around in fear of being noticed, is a moment she should record for posterity — a pun, which you will excuse me for, because in the scene in question, she literally acts with only her back visible. Like the famous Humphrey Bogart scene in Casablanca where he is forced to emote in a key moment of the film when only his shadow on a wall is visible, Takia communicates more in that behind-the-back shot than most Bollywood actresses can manage in their entire career. Her performance reminded me powerfully of Tabu’s equally brilliant (and similar, in some ways) role in the film Viraasat. Her transition from meek and obedient bahu to the rebellious and independent-voiced widow retaking control of her life is also delicately and convincingly done.
Kudos also must go to Kukunoor. On the evidence of this one film, I’d rate him as one of the best Indian film directors working in the biz. There’s some controversy about whether the film is based directly on a real-life incident, or on a Malayalam film (to which Kukunoor duly bought the rights), but either way, it doesn’t matter once you see the film itself. I’m truly impressed and ecstatic about his ability to take a simple one-line idea and transform it first into a pitch-perfect screenplay, perhaps one of the most perfect screenplays I’ve seen filmed in a long time (not great or hall-of-fame material, mind you, not a great gaudy epic masterpiece, but simply a minor gem of craftsmanship, economy and elegance) and then turn that screenplay into a film that actually makes its obviously limited budged, locales, small cast and other limitations into strengths.
This is a film that would have been ruined had it been ‘mounted’ large and bold like most Bollywood producers would do. The absence of songs and dances, the skillful use of a few evocative tracks (by the very talented Salim-Sulaiman team of composers who’ve scored several Ram Gopal Varma films before), and the masterful use of classic film narration devices to add an extra emotional dimension to the minimalistic scenes (the crane up shot with sweeping musical overtures) actually seem just-right, and are used to excellent effect. Kukunoor has come of age, and I’m going to watch out for anything and everything this filmmaker does next.
The supporting cast is uniformly perfect, clearly working to their strengths under a director who knows exactly what he wants and how to get the best out of his entire cast and crew, even working against difficult deadlines and limitations (according to newspaper reports). Even Kukunoor, woefully miscast as a Punjabi contractor (Chopra) and with an accent that no Punjabi could ever match, does his part effectively, even though he smiles a bit more than needed. Then again, perhaps he was just happy as a director, knowing this would be the film that would break him out into the big-time!
All in all, Dor is a surprisingly entertaining movie — thanks in part to Talpade’s laugh-a-minute performance and Kukunoor’s direction, but also due to the two bookending performances by Takia and Panag. Both deserve major acting awards, and here’s hoping they get them.
I’d even go so far as to say that Dor, like RDB, is the kind of film we should be making more of as a country, and sending out for Oscars. This is the voice of India today, our voice. And it must be heard, even if we have to whisper loudly.
Ashok Kumar Banker is the author of the internationally acclaimed six-volume Ramayana series, an imaginative retelling of the ancient Sanskrit epic. He lives in Mumbai, India.