Via Darjeeling

All through Friday evening a friend and I were jumping around, waiting to watch the Indian “Roshomon”. I thought it would be a good break from the mindless movies I have been watching lately. It had been a conscious choice all this while, to go into movies and forget reality and just laugh all along. Thinking can be left for late night conversation with friends. Via Darjeeling as a movie will mostly be forgotten, but for those people who made an effort to watch the movie, it was worth it. After a long long time, Indian audiences are exposed to a movie that will make them think at every scene, will make them question why something is happening at a screen in front of them. The same story is repeated again and again from the perspective of different characters. The setting is a rainy night in what appears to be Calcutta. There are references made to references like Marquez and Satyajit Ray but most of them seem to be a dead end aimed at throwing audience off the track.

The same story, different perspectives, that’s what this movie is all about. The director does not want to tell us a story; it seems that he wants us to appreciate that viewpoints can differ. Kay Kay Mennon has been amazing in the movie. His expressions at the same scene for different versions have been characteristically different. Sonali Kulkarni must work on her English or stick to plain Hindi as then her powerful acting shows through. The rest of the characters however had little to do and often it seemed that their main aim were dialogue delivery at given cues and not acting. A commendable effort, I do hope we have better versions of Via Darjeeling hitting our theatres soon. NFDC, once the breeding ground of New Age Cinema in India might have lost its sheen but is still capable of churning out enjoyable surprises.