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Raymond Chandler’s ‘Lakhot’

Written and Directed by: Navdeep Singh.
Starring: Abhay Deol, Gul Panag, Raima Sen and Kulbhushan Kharbanda.

Manorama (Sarika) in her 40’s (or 30’s?) walks in to Satyaveer Randhwa’s (Abhay Deol) house in Lakhot, Rajasthan. Styaveer has recently debuted his first mystery novel, titled Manorama, which Manorama has read and curiously asks him to do a job for her. For a budding novelist, who doesn’t keep a copy of his own novel since it reminds him of his failure, 10,000 Rs is quite a temptation. But the job turns out to be a list of scandals and illusions mysteriously unfolding into a grand finale.

Manorama Six Feet Under is THE noir cinema. Navdeep Singh, along with Devika Bhagat, has written a marvelous screenplay. Right from the need for a detective protagonist, to femme fatales, a cop who helps protagonist solve mystery, flashbacks, high contrast images, silhouettes, habitual liars, corrupt villain and secrets that are violently dark are all necessary noir elemnts seen through Hollywood film-noir and neo-noir. Although the ’sad end’ is rather toned down cleverly. This movie reminds of J J Gittes and his ‘Chinatown’ (1974) so much that at one point the nose-cut seen featuring director Roman Planski’s cameo is shown on the tv. In this Bollywood era of Hollywood copiers where plots are copied but the required environment for that plot is never even understood let alone copied. This movie stands alone for director and writer’s ability to transfer exact noir elements from Raymond Chandler’s Double Indemnity (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946) which of course were adapted in Chinatown as well. The muted trumpet is used aptly creating a mystery atmosphere. This is an extraordinary debut.

Abhay Deol has shown great potential as a novelist using his writing abilities to find clues in his own life. His choice of movies have been unusual, for instance Ek Chaalis ki last local (2007). Next up is Raima Sen as Sheetal. She comes quite natural here. Kulbhushan Kharbanda never fails to perform. Gul Panag as Satyaveer’s disagreeable wife is rather convincing. Sarika has a short appearance. But the best performance above all was Vinay Pathak as Brij Mohan, Satyaveer’s brother in law and cop. He blends in with his sentence delivery as hot as Rajasthan’s desert.

Last but definitely remarkable is the cinematography. The hot sand, empty roads, dried bushes, burning sun and desert mountains are stunning and a bonus to this fast paced story that has twists after twists. Almost every event and person has a meaning and purpose. Nothing goes untouched for the second time. With an achievement like Manorama I wonder what’s next for Navdeep Singh. This movie you do not want to miss.

My rating: 9.5/10.

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