Mumbai Meri Jaan Review
iView Author: Suprateek Chatterjee (Mumbai, India)
Email: supchats [at] gmail [dot] com
Mumbai Meri Jaan Review – A Film Review by Suprateek Chatterjee
Rating: 4 on 5
We finally have a winner, folks. After 8 months into a decidedly lacklustre year for Bollywood (”Aamir” being the only really good movie in a year populated by the Races, Sinngh is Kinngs and Bachna Ae Haseenos), we have “Mumbai Meri Jaan”, the first GREAT film of 2008. Directed by the immensely talented Nishikant Kamat – the man who made the superlative Marathi feature “Dombivili Fast” – this is a beautifully made, kaleidoscopic portrait of aamchi Mumbai limping back to normalcy after the 7/11 serial bomb blasts two years ago.
Nishikant Kamat deserves a big pat on his back for scripting and directing this feature with a lot of heart and a lot of vigour. India’s answer to the Oscar-winning “Crash”, this one features a multithreaded storyline consisting of common Mumbai citizens – from Kay Kay Menon’s Suresh, an out-of-work computer salesman who is mistrustful of the Muslim community to R. Madhavan’s Nikhil Aggarwal, an idealistic corporate yuppie, who shuns “the better life” abroad to stay in his own country and improve it. On the other hand we have Roopali Joshi (Soha Ali Khan), a maverick journalist for a leading TV news channel, for whom the tragedy becomes personal when she finds out her fianc'© also died in the blasts, and who, once perpetrator, finds herself an exploited victim of the merciless fourth estate.
Paresh Rawal, in one of his greatest performances – on par with himself in Shyam Benegal’s “Sardar” – plays Tukaram Patil, an aging cop due for retirement, prone to spouting out philosophy and humour in the same breath. Under his wing is rookie cop Sunil Kadamb (Vijay Maurya), seething with self-righteous, idealistic rage at corruption and apathy, and also because his honeymoon got cancelled thanks to the bomb blasts. And last, we have Irrfan Khan as a Madrasi coffee vendor struggling to make ends meet and to attain status and respect in a city where money talks. He learns about how fear and panic can be generated instantly – and all it costs is a rupee.
The writing is fabulous. It is a very, very rare Hindi film that does not sound scripted. Listening to the characters in this movie talk is like listening to conversations taking place in the local train, or in the table next to you at a restaurant. The characterization is precise; each character looks like and sounds like the character he or she is, and nobody lives in outlandish bungalows or drives fancy cars (Indeed, Madhavan’s Nikhil spends much of his time convincing everyone why he prefers commuting by train instead of buying a car, which he can obviously afford.) The dialogue is crisp, infused with sarcastic, deadpan humour and is really worth listening to. Each line of it. How long has it been since we’ve had a movie like that?
Mercifully, aside from the Kay Kay Menon track – and it’s done in a subtle manner there, too – Kamat avoids playing around too much with the done-to-death Hindu-Muslim rivalry and communal and political overtones. What is shown instead, is a more realistic slice-of-life where the day after the blasts, all Mumbaikars were worried about was how to travel in the train and beating the early morning rush. We see Suresh struggling to resolve fundamental conflicts – he needs money but refuses to take a lucrative order for a company owned by a Muslim. Roopali, a ruthless journo, is exploited by her own news channel for a story dealing with her personal loss. It’s a sharp critique of the media and their wanton abandonment of ethics as they cash in on the tragedy – remember the Aarushi case recently? – and Kamat handles it well. If it seems like a caricature, one must remember that T.V. news channels are just that nowadays.
Mumbai Meri Jaan also boasts of excellent cinematography, and a very good background score by Sameer Phaterpekaris which is extremely apt, despite being a trifle over-orchestrated. The editing is laser-sharp, cutting back and forth between the several storylines in a manner that is coherent and yet paces the film well. But the real star is the direction. Nishikant Kamat proves his mettle as one of the brightest new talents out there. Meticulous attention to detail and some brilliant shots (I loved the one where Vijay Maurya goes out of the police station and stands in the rain – very Janusz Kaminiski-like) make this one of the most brilliantly directed films in ages. It has National Award written all over it.
If I must nitpick, I could grumble about the shockingly shoddy special effects depicting the train blast. But I won’t, for two reasons. One, because it’s a well known fact that movies like MMJ are made on budgets which are roughly a third of, say, two songs from any given Yash Raj film. Secondly, it was about 30 seconds long and I didn’t feel that the impact had been diluted at all.
And finally, what can one say about a cast that already looks so great on paper? This is the ensemble performance of the year with everyone giving at least career-best performances. Kay Kay, Madhavan and Soha Ali Khan are brilliant, Vijay Maurya is stunning, and Paresh Rawal reaffirms his status as one of the greatest actors in this country. But the scene-stealer is none other than Irrfan Khan. In a role where he doesn’t have too much screen time, very little dialogue (much of it in Tamil), Irrfan is heart-breakingly good, conveying everything through his eyes. Is there a more versatile character actor than him today? Doubtful.
I conclude with two words. Tax-Free. NOW.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
btw, Sardar was made by Ketan Mehta.
After this review I really want to go out and watch the film.Seems like all our prayers for a good film this year has been answered.
Yes they have been answered, please spread the good word and make sure people see the film.:)
Madrasi coffee vendor?
Does he speak thamizh in the movie?
Irrfan speaking Thamizh is sure exciting to me…
thamizh is tamil ?
btw i think mithya was also one of the good fulms we had this year
Yaar vivek, mithya is like a mole in front of the towering mountain of MMJ.
i totally agree that Irrfan is the showstealer, but watch out for Soha Ali, she surprises you with her amazingly mature performance. Just watch her emote here and in RDB, u’ll know what I mean
fantastic movie ……undoubtedly the best movie of the year…
it’s not the best film of the year but a very important film, one that should be seen more than a recent release about how not to pee while seating… let’s not get swayed away because the film’s heart is in the right place… mithya was a better-made film even if its theme might not have been that important… you do not have to trash another film to praise this one… watch it for its own merits and this one has quite a few…
well cant wait to catch this film right away……am just waiting to finish work so can catch the morning show at fame..
with such a star cast the movie has genius written all over it!!!!
Kudos to MMJ…………at last we have a movie to praise and applaud out of all the trash that has been rolled out through the year…
amazing movie….nishikant kamat….take a bow
Was Amir a great movie? Do we need to praise Amir or No Smoking or something related to Anurag Kashyap to sound credible on PFC?
I saw couple of movies from Iranian / Moroccan film makers and their camera work was almost same as that of Amir. Real people and real locations etc. I donno why everyone making a great deal out of it? In Dombivali Fast the hero had givena mind blowing performance. I am yet to watch this movie but I don;t know if I am qualified to understand and like it as I did not like Amir too much.
@Zaid, did not like Aamir either. Too pretentious for me.
That said, nope, you don’t have to praise Anurag, Nishi to come to PFC or get noticed. We have in the past time and again held firm positions on what “we”, personally and as a blog think about Cinema – as an art, as a medium of entertainment – to all people irrespective of alligence and association, region or intelligence.
You have a valid point – I am a big fan of Kirostami myself and if you digg-up the archives, you will find some amazing posts on Iranian and other foreign movies. Aamir is referenced because its Indian, more closer and easily available to a larger diaspora of PFC audience.
Please voice your opinions as much as you can – every view counts and is heard.
Mind-blowing film guys. 5 minutes standing ovation @ PVR Bangalore last night. NK strikes gold. Don’t miss it for anything. The must-watch this weekend.
@ashutosh:
Apologies to everyone for the mistake. Sardar was by Ketan Mehta and not Shyam Benegal as I have erroneously written.
I think Sardari Begum sort of turned into Sardar in my head while writing this review :-) (which btw i wrote in a frenzied adrenalin rush immediately after coming home from the theatre)