’Pinjar’ (skeleton) is a story based on amrita pritam’s novel ’pinjar’.Its a story describing the great saga of india-pakistan partition and the plight of
women, often the worst victims of war and communal violence.The movie in a way also signifies the sacrifce of happiness which indian women historically has been
giving. It is director’s debut movie and I must say that his effort is worth mentioning.
The star cast is exceedingly good and contains a band of class actors though some of them are wasted for very small (5-10 min) roles. Like kiran kumar is shown in
just a qawali, seema biswas (of bandit queen fame)acts as a mad women uttering the typical punjabi words like ’’marr jaa khasman khaneya’’ , ’’twada khakh na rahe’’, etc
:).A praiseful performance by Urmila Matondkar.She plays puro which is the main character in the the movie.Puro’s parents have fixed her marriage and later she gets
abducted by a good-hearted Rashid (manoj bajpai).After a couple of days she runs away from the clutches of rashid but now her family is not ready to accept her
(though they want to).They have a younger daughter whose is suppose to get married, so who will marry her if they accept puro ? It depicts those times when the
society thinking was not very broad minded. Later rashid succumbs under family pressure and marries puro forcefully to settle a generations-old feud. After 1947
partition the scene shifts to one of puro’s bhabhi (her brother’s wife).This time puro musters courage and with the help of rashid rescues her bhabhi and sends her to
india.
Sanjay Suri, kulbhusan kharbanda and manoj bajpai are commendable. The only major thing about the movie is that it stretches too long because of the fact that the
director has tried to portray the visual translation of entire novel in a 3 hour time frame.
The screenplay of the movie will literally take you back to those 1947 days. Practically each and everything been right from bus, passengers sitting on the top of the
bus with their cycles, the lush green fields, left hand driven jeeps , the huge cars of those times, money transactions (2 aane , 25 paisa, 50 paisa), pagdi style,
halwai shops, people eating jaleebi in those cones with large glasses of milk, haveli with those royal carvings of the door, the rough sketches of mohammad ali jinah,
the dresses of women and men, and much more has been taken care of and depicts the style of those days, rather immitates it perfectly.Lot of Sikhs ( including nyangh
Sikhs ) are shown in the movie especially during the riots.
Dialogues need to have a special mention here. Dr.Chandraprakash has made a honest attempt to give the most suitable dialogues for the movie.
The music of uttam singh blends well .The movie contains the famous verse of warish shah Ajj akkha Waris Shah nu (Today I ask Waris Shah).It has been sung very well
and is extremely touching.’’ Maar uddari ’’ and ’’shaba ni shaba’’ are good foot tapping numbers. Also contains some shabads (hymns).
In all a must watch movie and personally I would rate it 7-8 in a scale of 10