Hussain’s fantasy comes alive is what you can say about his feature film called Gaja Gamini (The Elephant’s Walk).
Dont go expecting a masala movie for this is not a conventional movie about heroes, heroines, plots and villians. This is Gaja Gamini, a story about the liberation of the female form portrayed through a journey in time. The female form is either shakuntala, savita, monica etc., protrayed by Madhuri Dixit or the other forms played by Shabana Azmi, Farida Jalal or Shilpa Shirodkar, etc.
To be fair the concept is exciting because there is an hard attempt made to bring to life a parallel art cinema, a cinema of colours, a cinema of paintings in real life, lastly, but not the least a cinema of relationships.
Gaja Gamini is well picturised and the sets and dance sequence are stunning but the movie is neither here nor there because it does not do justice to cinema nor the artistic talent of M.F.Hussain.
Madhuri is at her stunning best as she stirs the hearts of all the men, starting from Kamdev (played by Inder Kumar), Leonardo da Vinci(Naseeruddin Shah), Shahrukh(Shahrukh Khan). Madhuri dances and emotes tonnes of sensuality and grace but for all her acting she cannot be expected to carry a film short on story and ideas.
Alas!, only if all this could have been backed by a well knit story we would not have to bear a dud Hussain.