Movie Review : Road, Movie

Rating

Road, movie is an unusual Hindi film, starring Abhay Deol, the stalwart of many unusual films. Deol plays the role of Vishnu, a young man of the middle-class, un-interested in taking over his father’s hair-oil business. His father Atma, proprietor of Atma hair oil business is pushing his son to show greater interest in his soon-to-be-inheritance. In a desperate attempt to get away from his ordinary small-town life, Vishnu volunteers to deliver some materials to a museum in seaside Samudrabad. The journey to the museum will involve a drive through the desert, in a rickety old Chevy truck. The truck is a mobile “talkie”; a truck outfitted with an old-style projector, meant to take cinema on the road to fairs and melas.

Well-armed with his mother’s (Thatte) ghar-ka-khana, home-made charms to ward off the evil eye on the six-day long trip, and his father’s tender remonstrations to sell Atma hair oil on the journey (three boxes of the oil are also placed in the truck), Vishnu sets off. On the journey, he grudgingly picks up passengers – a boy (Faizal) from a local dhaba wanting to get to the big city, Om chacha (Kaushik) – a portly mechanic who wants a ride to a mela, and a young gypsy woman (Chatterjee) in search of water. Thrown into an alien environment, will sheltered, self-absorbed Vishnu find his life changed by this different experience?

Now, “Road, Movie” is a festival-circuit film, so I was expecting an arty, non-commercial film. What I wasn’t bargaining for, was a film which lost it’s rhythm midway. Director Dev Benegal probably meant to tell us a soulful story of life and cinema, highlighting some truths about the haves and the have-nots. However despite the interesting start to the film, a story which held much promise, and an excellent cast, the flagging screenplay meant that I could only guess at the message he meant to convey.

Out of all the characters in the film, Vishnu’s character was the best sketched. Deol plays his character with much sympathetic skill. The supporting cast is also able, and I cannot blame them for the faltering characters and the sometimes contrived situations. The problem with this film was that is was inconsistent in it’s tone and direction. There was much philosophy, dreaminess, and elements of the fantastic, but there were also the hard-to-believe, pragmatic encounters with the corrupt policemen and the seemingly merciless water mafia.

The film falters. It is boring. It was hard keeping my finger away from the stop button. I de-recommend this one heartily.