Masaan: Real slice of life

Starring: Richa Chadda, Vicky Kaushal, Sanjay Mishra
Rated: 8/10
This is no fun movie about the Banaras which we have seen in Bollywood through ages but with tinted glasses of either foreign tourism or as a heavy on the heart town of death and pyres.  Having said that, this one too is about death (Masaan means death) and kriya-karam ghats but it is thrown at you with a strange cushion of life happening just as it does alongside the end of a journey.
It is the wanton realism of the films that takes it over and above all the other filmmakers who have centred around Kashi to tell you their stories, be it of romance or otherwise.  But Masaan packs a punch by showing you Kashi and the Kashiwallahs exactly as they are and as they live their life. Nothing is dressed up or underdone. Everything is apt and to the point.
This, however, does not make Masaan a cut and dry kind of docu-drama around Varanasi. With Richa Chadha as the Kashi girl in a mess as its central character and also its main story, the debutante director has shown his refreshing cinematic prowess by keeping you entwined in the life and times of a bevy of small town men, women and all their negativities. There is no escape from these negativities in the entire film but still there are these oases of relief that come in the form of a budding romance between a Dom’s son and an upper caste college girl. There is humour, there is everyday life, there is pathos and there is corruption, police blackmail and there is life happening all the time at the door of death.
Indeed, it is an engaging and true slice of life that many of us life but may not really want to go through. A perfect pedestal for the launch of a directorial journey through big screen life. Richa Chadha holds forth well though one feels she could have been given more nuance than her single-track role allows her histrionics skills.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, July 26, 2015

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