Mon Avis : Movie Review - Delhi 6 - All hope and hype be damned!

I went, I saw and and I was tested... tested for patience like never before. Dont blame me. Mehra upped the bar but I still tamed my expectations. But come on, one too many guilty pleasures to expect when all you saw in promos, was a bunch of scenes with AR Rahman's music over it. We decided the movie has to be good, after all scenes look amazing and the score was magical. The plot was never hinted to and we relished the ignorance of what lied in those 140 odd minutes. Phew! So we were conned and how!

I am not an elite who likes esoteric cinema. My baseline is simple, the movie at which ever level, must be entertaining. Period. That is mainstream cinema vis a vis its art counterpart. Delhi 6 is mildly entertaining, that too only if you get desperate. At all levels, it is a mere time pass and no great cinema , not even with the superficial message it pretends to carry.

D6 is a case of too many metaphors gone consistently wrong. And this set of metaphorical blunders starts with the name - delhi '6' a reference to the area of chandini chowk, with its facets hardly explored enough while the plot meanders through its half-baked character.

By now we all know , Roshan (Abhi) comes to India to escort her grandmother back to the country. He stays here, gets awed by the aspects , which borders onto fascination and much too happily he keeps clicking all the locales and people on his Motorola cell phone. Oh dear the burden of being a brand ambassador of Motorola in real life on the reel life! So he is here, he meets all the characters around in chandini chowk with some of their own facets and an ever growing menace of 'kala bandar' - which Mehra has quite liberally used as a metaphor for inner conflict and evil. I have absolutely no problem with this and its allied metaphors, only if it was used more maturely and convincingly . 

They put all of it up as a travesty which is riddled with situational humor and a couple of comic scenes to draw laughters, just when you are getting too bored to ignore the hype. So let me delineate more specifically what dint work for me:

Down :

• Too many metaphors and all of them half baked - I dont have a clue how to classify this movie - was it about turmoil within characters? Was it about Hindu-Muslim repose? Was it a larger satire on human instincts? Was it simply AR Rahman? Was it Chandini Chowk ? May be it was all of it in moderation and nothing of any in conviction! Kala bandar was overplayed and escaped me completely. How can Mehra fall for such a ridiculous imagery , overblow it and then go on to relate it in a half-baked way to all possible evils mankind may be reeling under. Mehra first attempted to rib the actual event that rocked Delhi and then use it unconvincingly to rake up a reference to evil. Or whatever. Then you have Ramlila fillin in every 10 minutes which doesnt even have any figurative sense , then you have a fakir holding a mirror as a metaphor to a passage inwards - all these failing to impress one bit. Add to that the grand metaphor of Masakkali. I was almost beginning to like pigeons.

• Music - No dont kill me yet. Ill have to skin myself before I say that AR Rahman's music in D6 is mediocre. I am in love with it and will be in love with it atleast for the rest of 2009 until his next better score undoes this love.Smile. Bias of the utmost form . Why I mentioned this in downs though is the shock which i underwent when this music was underutilised to degree of almost an insult to the maestro. Five songs are played in the first half itself and all barring, Masakkali, are played for barely 2 minutes (a fraction) with almost no affection for the lyrics or whatsoever attempt to choreograph. I was amazed and disappointed. Dont tell me Mr. Mehra that you edited most of it to fit your package under 150. I d rather say you had reduced your monkey gag a bit.

• Character sketch - is all sketchy, underdeveloped and one too many. It is failed projection of an ensemble cast where each character is supposed to have a story of his/her own. But none of them are well - explained and all of them end up being a reduced caricature of their botched portrayals. Even the romantic chemistry between Abhi and Sonam is built out of the blue and looks weak throughout. 

• Background score - Should we even be talking about it? When all else is almost mediocre, this should be at the bottom of your wish-list. But hey, you dont forget the awesome background score that so helped emoting in RDB and Slumdog . Couldn't we have used some cinematic aid of that form? Unbelievable.
  

Ups:

• Abhishek/Sonam/Atul/Rishi Kapoor and others - Though a victim of the loose screenplay, most of them still shine in whatever little they are blessed with. Abhishek's pseudo-american accent be ignored, he does good in parts. Though this movie again does not give Sonam enough scope in terms of variety of serious scenes, yet she does a fantastic job in playing a innocent, middle class girl with smouldering aspirations and acute disregard to matrimonial-obsessed society. Atul Kulkarni is solid and sails through playing a meek character.  Rishi kapoor is briliiant and so is Waheeda Rahman. Supriya Pathak, Divya Dutta , Prem Chopra and Cyrus Sahukar are very corny and Aditi Rao - though an attractive woman is hardly a find (as some observers have stated) because of too little scope that her character offered. Couple of moments do work though - Watch for that hilarious scene when Cyrus and a woman are trying to make out and their feet rub on the remote control flicking the channels from birds mating to monkey menace and even a fleeting suggestive scene of rocket launch . Hah! ;) Another few scenes between Rishi and Abhishek (mention of Rishi's forlorn past) and Abhishek and Waheeda (Waheeda's growing mistrust in her own mitti ) are worth an applause. 

• Cinematography - Whatever Binod Pradhan has done to D6 is its only saving grace. The camera panning across Jama Masjid, Lal Quila, India Gate and even the maze by lanes or for that matter colorful scenes of ram lila are phenomenal. But alas, I get to hear most of Chandini Chowk was built in sets in Jaipur! Was it because Akshyay staged a coupe for real chandini chowk for even more disastrous CC2C around the same time..lol? You never know

• AR Rahman/Prasoon Joshi - Well , their music and lyrics (which can only be truly found on music cds of this movie) is phenomenol. Listen to Delhi 6 title song, Masakkali and Rehna tu and you will swoon. Masakkali lyrics have been the most soulful of recent times and Rehna tu sinks you into a magical space from which you do not want to ever recover. Title song, on the other hand, is all meant to work on your feet :) I wish they could just be picturised as well. It hurts.

With Oscar weekend just around the corner, I was looking for a good start leading up to a fine climax at the academy awards for Indian Cinema. Delhi 6 is not exactly that. It is not so enchanting as it is hyped, and it falls prey to that. Leave me, the audience 's reaction in the theatre after the credits rolled, was a tell - tale.

You can watch it, but kill all your expectations first - especially those arising out of the fallacious trailers.