Star cast : Varun Dhawan, Banita Sandhu, Gitanjali Rao
Directed by : Shoojit Sircar
Screenplay : Juhi Chaturvedi
Rating 4 out of 5
October is a shrine in the film. How you would ask? It is a month when the ‘parijaat’ flowers in their orange pants, fall upside down and create fragrance.
The flowers are rarely plucked. They are usually gathered from the ground in the mornings. The female protagonist in the film Shiuli played by the beautiful Banita Sandhu loves the flower and the symbol of the flower keeps appearing in the film in various contexts like a poem’s refrain.
Like the life of a beautiful flower that blooms to enthrall and cheer us silently, some lives bloom and wither away into oblivion. Varun Dhawan’s character Dan catches that ‘oblivion’ and brings it to light and life by enshrining it in memory.Set against a five star hotel trainee’s life, the film explores emotions in a very fine and tender manner. At various places in the film, the camera zooms into flowers adding to its cinematic language.
Varun Dhawan’s best performance till date – he plays Dan, a freedom loving hotel management trainee who is shocked by an accident and tries his best to solve the problem in the way he knows best – by being there for the family. He is the breath of fresh air in what would be an otherwise sombre movie. Humour flows effortlessly in the ICU or between tubes and oxygen cylinders with his childlike curiosity and a near obsessive motive to set things right.
An acknowledgement of the transience of life, the film takes us to the fine world of emotions and the value of friendship and love expressed in different ways – that of a friend, a silent lover, a sister, mother interspersed with a whole lot of hospital scenes.
Love, commitment, treating a loved one with greater love and enshrining that love in his heart forever, Dan is totally endearing. He touches your soul by being his vulnerable self. He has no pretence and he doesn’t care to impress – he is all soul without caring to dress it up with decorum. Banita Sandhu emotes the film with her large limpid eyes.
If you are looking for pace as in speed, the film will slow you down. It will engage you to look at the fine nuances that the film-makers create. It is a real film about real life situations and how some of us discover love, our own emotions, deep empathy and compassion in the most trying of situations.
A film that leaves behind a lasting fragrance..
Can’t agree more with the above review. 🙌