Yeh saali zindagi…

From one of the critically celebrated directors comes a movie that has a very Guy Ritchie movie kind of a feel to an Indian movie. Sudhir Mishra has his name printed firmly in the book of fame of Bollywood by making some non-mainstream movies that are both hard hitting and bring out social issues that are scorned. With “Yeh saali zindagi” he has just gone about business taking up the very prevalent issue of kidnapping for ransom that is rampant in Delhi and Haryana.

The cast of this movie is also non-mainstream. The leading actors in the movie are Irfan Khan, an actor who has cut a niche for himself in such a way that now we can say that there are characters which only Irfan can play, Chitrangada Singh, who got introduced by Sudhir Mishra in “Hazaron khwahishein aisi”, Arunoday Singh, last seen in Aisha and you won’t recognize him as the same guy in this movie and Aditi Rao, last seen in Delhi 6. The movie also features Saurabh Shukla, Sushant Singh and Vipul Gupta with meaty roles.

The movie is a collection of events that entangles these four main characters. What Sudhir Mishra portrays is every crime is possible and there is no place where crime cannot find its genesis. He maintains an undercurrent of love between Irfan and Chitrangada and the husband-wife relationship of Arunoday and Aditi. If the movie had to be described in one word I’d go for ‘explicit’. It is explicit in every sense, the use of foul colloquial language, the love making scenes and the interactions of different characters in the movie. The movie goes from one scene to the other some connected some unconnected some going into a flashback and some coming back. The movie makes for a very confusing watch with an undertone of love that seems to be overused in the Hindi movie industry. The movie doesn’t have anything mentionable. It doesn’t have any telling performances apart from Irfan Khan. At one point I was thanking heavens that there was Irfan Khan in the movie who with his typical mannerism and witty dialogues keeps the movie afloat. The other characters form a part of the movie so have come and played their part. The movie is fast paced and moves headily from one scene to the other but you cant help but wonder at some point that the movie could have done away with so much in the second half which could have brought it to a speedy end.

The only other movie of Sudhir Mishra that I have seen is “hazaron khwahishein aisi….” So I don’t have a lot to say about his credibility. His movie making style is atypical, can entertain audience and drive home some message. I enjoyed watching the movie but came out as if I had just come out of a coffee shop, you don’t remember going in or the taste of coffee because you have moved on and the experience hasn’t lingered. So will the movie, “yeh saali zindgai..”

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