Why the hell I am writing another review on the same movie, when so many are already there? But this is simply an outcome of my irresistible temptation to present my views on this wonderful piece of presentation. And seriously I have no intention of it to be shared. I am not sure about the Director’s intention but this movie has surely impacted deep into the thoughts of an individual.
You are lucky that you r blessed with the SENSES, but what about who aren’t. Have you ever thought about them, their life, their needs, their feelings? If not, then this movie will make u think. This will take you to a journey of Life where colors are missing and music has no meaning. But life is still there, standing with a Dignity.
This journey starts when Michelle (Rani Mukherjee) is few months old and her parents get to know that she is a blind and deaf child. Michelle starts living her life completely based on her own instincts (which are quite similar to any Animal behavior). As she grows, she becomes a burden for everybody else. She is around 8 years now (played by child actress Ayesha) and her father has made up his mind to send her to asylum. But her mother insists on keeping her with themselves. They start searcing for an instructor who can teach their daughter to take care of some very basic things in her Life.
This takes them to an instructor named Debraj Sahay(Amitabh Bacchan), who has a great passion of teaching handicapped children. He listens the case of Michelle and decides to take up the challenge. It takes quite some time for him to change her animal approach into a learning attitude. He uses the ’touch and talk’ technique to build up her vocabulary and sign language. It takes him 20 days to finally get a word out of Michelle’s mouth ...’WATER’. He devotes rest of his life to train and educate Michelle.
Michelle finally gets admission in the university to do her graduation in Arts. She fails her first attempt in examinations and they (Michelle & Debraj) celebrate. They celebrate their failure because they know that ’’failure will take them to the way of success’’. She tries again, and fails again, and again and again. And this keeps on going like this ...when she also starts feeling something for her teacher.
Is it love? Yes it is ....and she wants to show her affection to her teacher. But this incident totally shakes his thoughts and he finds himself unable to cope with the situation. This disturbs him so much that he decides to leave the place forever.
She meets her again after twelve years, in a hospital where he is suffering with Alzheimer’s disease. He has completely forgotten his past and living a lonely life. He even can’t speak somehow. The teacher becomes student now and the student becomes teacher. Michelle helps him to get back his memory. She tries her best and finally manages to get a word out his mouth ’’WATER’’ (I am totally unaware of the correlation of ‘first word’ and ‘WATER’ although in most case it is MOTHER or in this case it can could have been TEACHER). Though he dies after some time, but he leaves an independent Michelle behind to live an independent life with dignity.
Script wise, it’s a new and creative concept for Indian movies and I liked it. Script is very well written but almost 40-45% dialogues are in English which could be a setback for Indian audience.
Everybody has played his/her role in absolute sense. Ayesha has done an excellent job. Rani mukherjee has come out as a talented actress with this movie. Amitabh has again given full justice to his character.
Director has not tried to play with the Concept overly. He has presented the concept in a simple, straight forward and well defined manner. After devdas you can’t expect SLB to direct such a movie which is quite too far from any Drama/Poetry. I am really amazed at this wonderful and thoughtful creation of his.
Emotion wise its a really touching movie. If you can find tears in the eyes of young Bangalorean crowd, what would you say? Nothing except that …the ’’Direction is great’’.
The only thing distracting in the movie is its ’Cultural Context’. You never feel you are in India. Though the story takes place in Shimla, but still the movie Sets (Production sets) and Music always give you a feeling of Hollywood Movies (esp. old). And as I already said most of the conversation is in English, it is going to be only a metropolitan movie. Fortunately or unfortunately movie doesn’t have any songs.
I am quite sure, this movie will be alive in audience’s minds for a long time.