Road, Movie: Exotica, Sells
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Road, Movie poster
When Vishnu (Abhay Deol) escapes the fate of selling scented hair-oil and takes on a road trip leaving behind his middle class surroundings to deliver a scrappy old truck to a town across the desert and makes his way through the unknown, you expect the journey to be significant. From Homer to the present day such journeys have presented excellent opportunities for the protagonist to go through ‘a rite of passage’ that tests his mettle and leaves him wiser at the end of it all.
However, it is difficult to attach any great significance, symbolic or otherwise, to the events in Vishnu’s journey. If I am forced to cobble together a sense of purpose of Vishnu’s travel – well, he does get a lesson in humility when his truck breaks down and he apologises to the mechanic (Satish Kaushik); gets a glimpse of the cruelty of people in power in his brush with the police and the water mafia; learns to share water with others and almost falls in love (his heart being between his legs, as pointed out in the film) but one doesn’t need to travel to the middle of nowhere to experience these. A half-day, open-eyed tour through any city would expose you to all (and more) of such facts of life. It may appear that the only valuable lesson the desert teaches him is to wipe his arse with thorny desert bushes. If the film was supposed to be a meandering visual exercise to just sit and take it in – I was still struggling. Indeed the film is visually arresting and yet the landscape and the people have been so exoticised that they end up serving only an exploitative purpose.
Director Dev Benegal may have wanted to tell a story but it is difficult to detect it in the slow, rambling unfolding of the narrative, inane dialogues, disparate and unremarkable events and an indulgent pace. The dialogues are often disconnected from the world shown. A boy working in a ramshackle tea-stall in the middle of remote-India-nowhere talks of American coffeeshop giant, Starbucks. All characters including a woman from ‘nomadic’ groups forever in search of water speak Hindi without a trace of local accent.
A little way into the film it is discovered that the worn-out truck is a mobile theatre and carries film equipment. The magic of cinema and its reach across cultures brightens the film for a short while. In fact these nostalgic screenings may be the only bright spots in a film that feels more like a purposeless wandering than a journey of any importance.
Tags: Abhay Deol, Dev Benegal, Padmaja Thakore, Road Movie, Satish Kaushik
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Rahul Dholakia
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Varma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Sachin Kundalkar
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
now this is a classic example of ‘ignorance’
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Subin,do you cut paste one liners to reviews or you were just too busy to explain the ‘ignorance’
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the plot of this movie is very similar to ‘76 german film, Im Lauf der Zeit. saw it yesterday and then saw the german movie again.. endless similarities..
its just substituted india for germany and the time period and has been indianised..
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so, even dev benegal copies!!!
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this could easily have been a comment on existing post of ‘road, movie’ or the guerilla-reviews of the movie
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some comments that i have read on pfc are longer and more descriptive than this entire post, what a waste of space. sorry, not good enough!
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(Deleted Partially Editors Note: Please keep your discussions limited the review and the film). I saw Road, movie today and it was the best I’ve seen this year so far. Here is a master at work, gifted filmmaker. Among the Indian film makers across the globe, Dev and Anurag definitely have it in them to inspire film makers and film making students. For all the negative reactions which are pouring in due to limited understanding of the medium by so called experts, I’d recommend connoisseurs of cinema to go and watch this movie in the theater before it goes away. Watching this movie is like reading English August or Keep Off The Grass. Great cinematography, great background score, awesome dialogue, brilliant acting and a master piece in direction. The movie is bold and to an extent revolutionary for its attitude. Guys like Rajeev Masand may find it arrogant.
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Dude..why you gettin so pissed of?? She is entitled to his opinion of the film and she’s merely expressing on a platform like PFC, which was started for this very purpose.
Just coz your views dont match hers, you have no right to accuse her of not understanding the movie or call her intellectually challenged!!
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Editors Note: Comment Deleted. Please refrain from making personal attacks
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@Subhasish
Simply because we sit on either ends of a computer terminal doesn’t mean that we can do away with the common courtesies related to the act of arguing with someone.
Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, attack the argument not the person.
@Anand
Please refrain from using such filthy and derogatory language or targeting people based on their ethnicity. I fear that this forum is already turning into a Rediff, God I miss the old days when the arguments were lengthy and passionate but still civil.
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yaar since when has calling someone “Bengali babu” become filthy and dergoratory. We Indians have the habit of getting pissed off too easily.
@Subhshish And why is not possible for people to understand that there can be opinions which differs from yours. How boring it will be if each one of us thought in the same manner
. You think its a great movie, fine. Go watch it again, recommend it to your friends and if you have treat due – treat your friends with a show of this movie.
I found it lame and boring. I will discourage if any of my friends asks for an opinion. Let us co-exist.
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Just tell me, amidst all this life-threatening thirst and wild brown chase for nothing, y the hell was truck never short of fuel? I seriously hoped that the insane movie would end as a dream sequence of Abhay and then I may be able to like it…but…
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haha good point
and how on earth would a kid in those circumstances know of a starbucks? i can understand a barista or coffee day or mcdonalds …but starbucks??? that probably missed getting indianized from wherever it was lifted
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exactly the kind of review this movie deservces, IMO.
If good back ground score and a few excellent shots can make a movie great why can’t excellent costumes, great locales and beautiful people do the same?
Techincality should compliment the movie and not become the movie as a whole
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disappointed to know that many of our folks dint understand the movie…the ‘dream’ of life…sad..!
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Dude…like i’ve mentioned this before, just coz somebody doesn’t like a particular movie doesn’t mean they haven’t understood it. Grow up an try an understand that everybody has a right to his/her opinion..!!
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Errr raunak buddy… subin’s comment isn’t very specific to start with in the first place. His is a general statement saying he is disappointed in the majority of the public not ‘understanding’ the film!! He didn’t mention anything on the lines of what you’ve qouted..so chill yaar
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yep…i am aware of the opinions and the rights…my opinion is that, its highly unfortunate that most of the people around me dint get the spirit of this movie. I read an interesting viewpoint somewhere here that , the tailors of this , created a ‘different’ perception abt this movie..! dunno how true that is…., if thats the case, its sad.
anyways…this is one of the most colorful movies i have seen recently….brilliantly made…! such a feel good film…! its all abt fulfillment of life….dream come true..!
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Mehta saab, please tell us what were the shortcomings of the review, and how it can be improved? yeh adhoora kachra comment mat kiya karo.
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I agree with this review. It is a road, meandering to nowhere.
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Hey Padmaja, read your review but had already watched the film. I did not enjoy watching it is all i can say. I just finished reading the REVIEWS OF YOUR REVIEW. We have some real passionate people reading up your review.Would like you to review the Union Budget someday,hoping to see people react with the same passion and intensity.
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Audrey, why would you like to review Union Budget on a film appreciation website to see people’s reaction? Is it well-shot and has great costume designs?
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I find Road,Movie full of fakeness. Could not find any genuineness in characters, story ( was there any?) even events. Seems every character was aimless directionless wandering similar to the movie.
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Comments AS expected .. every thing is bad ,beyond gasp until spoon feeded
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