Last night I saw ’’Everybody says I am Fine’’ at the DIA theater. I remember reading a review yesterday by Salma and wondering if its the same story line as ’’Snip’’. Apparently its the same movie, I still have to find out why the same movie was released under two different names. Luckily for me I had’nt seen snip.
I will not go into details about character in plot as there are multiple reviews on the site which do the same. Rehan Engineer, a theater student from London does a very good job at keeping a low profile in the film which is very necessary in contrast to the over-board counterpart of Koel Purie. Rahul Bose is again in an extreme over-the-top role very much in contrast with his character in ’Mr and Mrs Iyer’. Pooja Bhatt has an interesting role and so does Anahita (i love that name!).
The movie seems like an anthology of little stories but what I found lacking was the depth in any of the stories. They are snippets.. its a kind of minimalist tradition of ’’you get what you see’’ kind of deal. Dont think too much about the plots or the stories, just see this get the message and go back home. Though at the center the plot is very dark and has a strong social message but its again a very small snippet of an original plot.
The characters in my opinion were all very 1 Dimensional, intentionally I think. Rahul Bose has a way of saying this is not a typical film, you will not see a story behind every person, you wont even get to see a story behind a single person. His strength is his post modern representation of characters in the sense that they dont have a history, they are the present. Notice the lack of flashbacks except the pooja bhatt story which in the first place shouldnt have been in there. That story lacked any real material and was the only story for which we were taken beyond Xens’ saloon door.
Rahul Bose has an advertising background which seems to reflect in the movie through and through. The impulsive and often hurried sense of the plot line, the mystic ’sixth sense’ atmosphere of the film waiting for something to happen keeps the audience on the edge. He seems to be in a constant fear that the audience will get bored and keeps the action on the screen ongoing. Also his target audience is narrowed down to a major extent, I notice there’s no subtitles for the hindi slang which suggests he does not seem to be pandering to the west. Its strictly the uprising english speaking globally exposed middle class in the metro areas. Thats a bold stance to take when thinking about the profits !
I would have liked more depth of the central plot, why bahamas ? why mittal ? I would like to know more about Xen, why does he have the gift ? Why did he get it after the death of his parents ? But there are few answers. Its more like a surrealist play of sequences without time or ’meat’ . The social exploration of this kind leaves much to the audience without the sense of preaching. Anyone reading this review should see this movie strictly for the fact that this is a ’hatke’ film. You may or may not agree with it, but u will surely see a new direction for the hinglish cinema.