Manorama – Man khush ho gaya

By: kartik krishnan

PFC

First things f**ing first, I haven’t seen Chinatown so all those who comment of it being a copy of Chinatown without watching the film and in short “nosy” people …. Please watch manorama first and lemme know how different it is from Chinatown….

This ain’t a review … just some reactions from the film….

You gotta give it to Navdeep maan…. He has captured Rajasthan beautifully …. I literally felt being there in the desert- city. The DOP has done an amazing job in whatever little budget the film might have had… Hats off !!!

The tracking 50 ruppee Abhay speaking true rajasthani with the villager shot …
The shots of abhay driving around in his bike/scooter….
The fish tank shots of him and raima ….

Background score is eerie and haunting… most definitely it has lifted the film up by quite a few notches !!!

Majority of the dialogues by Abhinav kashyap (WHERE THE FUCK HAVE U BEEN SIR ??? ) are tooooooooooo good … capturing the Rajasthani flavour .. the husband wife tussles …. the street smart cop lingo… the locals … the “royal – hum… humein… hamara’ manner of addressing of the rajputs …. The goons …. Most of the lines are quite good…

The ones that stick into ur face are when raima sen speaks them … she is as irritating or perhaps has as irritating lines as Tara sharma in Khosla ka ghosla … defiantly not as bad as Nish kothari (Babu rao says nisha- ko- uthale- bhagwan) in Aag …. But yeah … reasonably bad she is…. Also the lines in some scenes of abhay – raima are not suited/fitting in an otherwise brilliantly written film.

Somehow I just dig a film much more when it uses a local lingo … Ek challis… Omkara … Haasil …. Khosla…. Love ‘em all !!!

Abhay is sincere … his performance could’ve been better ….i dunno something is missing .. may be his voice modulation … or little more expressive … but something is missing… he does a good job .. but I wish he does much better in his forthcoming films…. Having said that … it’s a decent effort….

Gul panag is perfect to the T.. no questions !!!

Vinay pathak is delightful… so much that you wish he had a longer role….

And who is playing the neighbour ??? isn’t he the same guy who played the press guy who offers abhishek bachchan a job in Yuva ??? He’s worth a mention too… in fact all the small town characters are ….

The goons are almost competing with each other as to decide who is better off than each other …. Its fantastic to see unknown faces acting and mouthing such real to life lines….

By the way Mr or Mrs chairperson of the Censor board …. Is it necessary to beep out the double meaning and suggestive dialogues/abuses in the film ??? they would’ve added so much character to it !!! I just hope the film copy is different from the premier copy that the lines/words are not beeped out. Some strange kick it gives me to see characters mouthing abuses in their local lingo …. When Tarantino does it and gets away .. why not us ???

The film is a noir thriller..(whatever that means) … keeps u engrossed to quite an extent but after the interval it becomes slightly dheela…. Loses its grip… that’s the part when raima sen has come into the picture …

But 15-20 mins after the interval it picks up its pace…. Still somehow I felt towards the end it is slightly long … despite having only half a song in the film(watch it to find out)
Thoda sa edit out ho sakti thi ….

You know just like Ek chaalis … for me the film ends when abhay has got the 2.5 crore rupees bag from Mangesh don’s house….

Suspense pey suspense hai mamu… the problem with such nice suspense films/who dunit/ why dunit is that they force you to think a lot …. And unless the resolution is like a HOLY FUCK WOW !!! moment the audience might feel cheated …

Here the audience may not feel cheated …. Nor will they feel WOW .. it will be like .. hmmmm that’s nice …. Sahi … they might have to think a lot and put two and two together

Some felt the film had a bit of spoon feeding… I felt it was quite necessary …. Otherwise I wldnt have understood it …

Despite all this I just fear that the common audience may not be able to understand it…. The suspense etc …. The film is very good .. but is the audience good enough ????

I am desperately hoping so….

Go and watch it…. Really nice film … has some flaws … but certainly MUCH MUCH better than some of the trash around … Navdeep is here to stay