Masaan (Hindi)
Director: Neeraj Ghaywan
Cast: Richa Chadda, Vicky Kaushal, Shweta Tripathi, Sanjay Mishra, Pankaj Tripathi, Nikhil Sahni
A lyrical indie that wipes off the miasma of morality and caste system in a city on the cusp of change, Masaan is an engaging testament of the times we live in.
And what better setting to set the game between tradition and modernity than Benaras, the city where many seek salvation, director Neeraj Ghaywan shows the nuts and bolts of it in a graveyard where you have to hit the skull of a burning dead body to help it migrate to the other world. It is a cycle after all.
Using crematorium as a metaphor, he underlines that death or disappointment is just a glitch in design. Unpretentious and uplifting, its unaffected tone is baffling at times.
The biggest triumph of Neeraj and writer and Varun Grover is that they have been able to generate tangible characters in a real world. There is constant brooding but no boredom.
Primarily, there are three strands capturing the prevailing dissension in small town India. Computer teacher Devi (Richa Chadda) is out to satiate her curiosity about sex.
Her desire is evocatively compared with that of the man who jumped into the enclosure of a white tiger. Things go haywire and Devi might lose the value of her name in the neighbourhood.
ANUJ KUMAR
