"One family’s tragedy was the price of a nation’s freedom".Reads the tagline that is moving and so is the plot. The circumstances are acute and touch anyone’s sensitive nerves, but the treatment is not upto the plot which had such tremendous potential.
A forcibly done cinematic adaptation of the extremely stirring rift between the two Gandhis has something in it that goes terribly wrong. The weak, shivering manner of speech of Kasturba and MK Gandhi fails to captivate. Also that Akshaye Khanna looks 30-something since his young adulthood does not help. The movie shivers and shakes and is feeble as all dialogues are in a low pitch. If it was dignity and humility of Mr. And Mrs M.K. Gandhi they wanted to portray, it seems more like they were about to faint because they preach, squabble, smile or cry in a hush that acts more like a lullaby.
The production design is very good and well detailed and locations, customs and costumes are well researched. And after all this, horrendous make-up destroys it all as you invariably keep on noticing tacky prosthetics in the form of M.K.Gandhi’s extended elf-like ears. Historically accurate detail gone awry! And an evidently old Kasturba still having the hands of the 30-something Shefali Shah cannot be digested, especially when the film-maker was detail-negligent enough to show a close-up of such young hands of the otherwise pan-cake faced 60 year-old Kasturba! Horrible, horrible make-up for her face throgh and through.
Harsh are all the above words, because this is what happens when the film and subject evoke such high expectations and does not live upto them. A lethargic pace, hush speech, repetitive urges, conversations and expressions and above all mediocre dialogue just dissolve the potent strength that this subject possessed.
The actors are good and consistent. What I would have expected from the film comes in its last 15 minutes in terms of brilliant performances from Zariwala(Gandhi), Shefali Shah(kasturba) and Akshaye Khanna(Harilal), where they finally strike the right powerful tone of the extreme pathos and resentment of the situation. The film’s power begins to exude just when it is about to end.
A film that could have been brilliant, sadly would stay as a ‘just-good’ film and not as a charged emotional conflict it could have been. The heartbeat monitor of this film beats at a constant level through its 2 hour length and that is the problem. Cinematic liberties sometimes are necessary!….