David: A stunner with some flaws

Starring: Vikram, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Vinay Virmani, Tabu, Lara Dutta, Isha Sherwani

It is grand on the canvas, it is stunning in cinematic experimentation, it’s a treat to the eyes, it’s a magical merger of three eras and it is all that would make for a gripping, novel experience in a carefully done-up cinema.

Considering that writer-director Bejoy Nambiar could throw up such packed potentiality of newness from a Bollywood pedestal, David should have been the ultimate dish for the exotic taste buds. But, despite all the big moments in this differently abled film, it seems too long and drifty in parts — that’s because Nambiar fails to give a befitting end to a punchy build-up and because the storylines of the three Davids in three timeframes fail to end with the passion with which they unfold.

That’s such a shame because Nambiar’s courage to do it differently, and his ability of adorning his newest mount on a unique mix of sights, shades and sounds very distinct to the three eras he portrays — a 1970s London with its shadowy underworld, a 2010 Goa with all its beauty, fun and frolic, and a 2012 Mumbai burning up in religious polarisation and daunting Hindu extremism — is captivating.

The assassin David in a tux-ed up Neil Nitin Mukesh blends magically with the black and white surround that Nambiar gives to this age. Neil sports the maximum gravitas among the three Davids, but despite his passionate love story embedded in the blood and gore of his master’s ultimate betrayal, the delectably smoky lanes of London he operates in, not to mention his equally sinewy girlfriend with gumption which he loses to his master’s flower child in the name of izzat, there is something that he doesn’t do right in the end — which, incidentally, is the case with rest of the Davids too.

The Goan David — more irritatingly tipsy than sober at all times — is about the coming of age of a sense of sacrifice in a man who is a loser on all counts of life otherwise. His love for his best friend’s would-be wife turns from funny to sad amid all the sun and sand that Nambiar landscapes beautifully in Goa. Isha Sherwani is pretty and innocent as she should be, Tabu (David’s confidante) as the massage parlourwali, is powerful in performance as ever but seems to have got less of a role. This David’s story is slim, in fact slimmest of them all though the protagonist does his best to keep up the tide.

The third David, with all his Rastafarian locks and innocence in the eyes is the gentlest of them all — a youth wrapped in making music and spraying gentle scorn on his priest father’s naïve ways to do good to society. So, when he rises from the ruins of religious extremism that almost kills his father, this David is angry, helpless and yet dogged enough to declare “mujhe jawab chahiye”. From an about-to-be rockstar on his way to America, to becoming a priest himself, his journey yet again is unexplained by the end of it all.

In short, David would have had it all, but for better finish lines of the three storylines beautifully propelled on a platform of imaginative, brilliantly displayed cinematic work.

Source: Published in Sunday Pioneer, 3rd February, 2013