I watched movie JAL today.I was having very less expectations from it but heard that its good and seem to watch once when I had seen its trailer, but after watching it made me to write a review about it. I think this movie took Bollywood to another heights.
Jal is the story of a diviner who helps the govt drill borewells to provide water for his village in Kutch, a place where water is so scarce that neighboring villages are always at loggerheads for it. But then things turn out bad because of greed.
It has a great concept but like I said, social films seldom do well.Maybe it’s made just for awards, I donno.location is good, there is natural acting, you feel you’re in the place itself seeing all the happenings. Songs are just OK according to me. Purab acts well, not like a modern young man that he usually acts as in films. This one is contemporary
n simple words, JAL begins with the Camera leading it from the front and the Cinematography continues to remain the only worth watching feature of the film right till the end. The interesting ensemble of actors like Purab Kohli, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Kirti Kulhari, Mukul Dev, Yashpal Sharma, Ravi Gossain, Rahul Singhand the old man Habib Azmi try their best to give something extra to the project doing the hard work sincerely. But actually its not the actors or the technical team which is to be blamed here for the end result not reaching out to the viewers as it should have. Instead it’s the director Girish Malik and his writers who are the main game spoilers here as they miss out a unique opportunity to make an exceptional never before kind of Hindi film with an interesting and great story idea. So even if the film might have won praises in several festival circuits as quoted, for me it didn’t have any of those remarkable sensibilities usually seen in all the festival movies.
Unfortunately, the film fails to emphasis any of the above plots with a complete focus as it should have and thus remains a mostly lost or confused attempt made on these two great social thoughts with a splendid cinematography. So with a heavy heart I am forced to give only average ratings to this fine attempt largely gone wrong and you can still go for it if you are solely interested in watching some dazzling camera-work alone brilliantly capturing the Rann of Kutch.