Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh :- A shade below awesome, perhaps?

Posted on by meetramz

This was the first movie that we were watching post the imposition of the Supreme Court
Order that necessitates the Indian National Anthem to be played before the movies. Our move was due to start at 21:45 and a couple of minutes before, the national anthem started. Didn’t do a thing for me other than noticing the respect that all of the 100-member strong audience gave to the national anthem and the seemingly inappropriateness of the same.

Kahaani did a few things for me

  1. Established Sujoy Ghosh as a brilliant, thoughtful and intelligent film-maker/story teller.
  2. A brilliant plot with amazing twists and turns leading to a totally unexpected climax.
  3. Re-enforced Vidya Balan as a power-packed performer.
  4. Captured the poignancy of not just Kolkata (Immortalized by Dominique Lapierre as The City of Joy) but also the colorfulness of the Bengali culture. The city was a fundamental character in the movie.
  5. An extra-ordinary and unconventional villain Bob Biswas played so brilliantly by Saswata Mukherjee.

So when the next set in the franchise was announced, it was natural for expectations to soar considering that it had both Sujoy and Vidya in the mix. And does the movie justice to its predecessor? Well almost. There are several things which worked for me, namely

  1. Sujoy’s ability to tell a convincing and natural story. This could happen to anybody
  2. Vidya’s incredible performance. Whether it be the yearning school clerk who feels for the little kid or coming to terms with the demons of her past or the fighting mother trying to retain her sanity amidst the chaos happening around her, the lady delivers a punch.
  3. Kolkata does play a part in the mix albeit there is a lot of action happening outside of the City of Joy.
  4. An intelligent script woven around one of the highly talked about evils of the day – Pedophillia and its prevalence even among respected families and societies.
  5. Some lovely characters like the humorous inspector Haldar (played by Kharaj Mukherjee) who reprises a similar role from the earlier movie. Or the old house-owner who falls asleep in the middle of a police check.
  6. The kid playing the little Minnie is outstanding and brings out the confusion faced by such children beautifully. The cuteness of the child further adds to the feeling of irony that grips you during those scenes.

However compared to the original Kahaani, this one does fall short quite a bit. While some of it may arise from some heavy expectations from the original, there are certain things that don’t stack up, making this a shade less than the original

  1. Durga’s past with Inderjeet (played adroitly by Arjun Rampal) really seems like a deliberate attempt as opposed to having been fully thought through. Plus it is never flushed out properly and so one is left wondering at what really happened with them.
  2. If the child is somebody who gets dragged to the headmistress every day and the headmistress claims to be friend of the family, it seems odd that the issue doesn’t surface earlier. Or is it a case of mass fait accompli?
  3. The need for the Pedophillic Uncle (played chillingly by yesteryear child star Jugal Hansraj) to come back into their lives. Was it just revenge or something else? If it is revenge, seemed like quite a contrived way to get to what he really wanted.
  4. The need to re-create a Bob Biswas clone, albeit a corrupt lady cop falls reasonably flat as the character turns out to be a dumb squib.
  5. There is no clear view on how did Durga transform into Vidya Sinha to escape the demons of the past. Plus the character of Arun was starting to build up nicely but is dropped mid-way and possibly offers no elevation to the script. Considering that he is portrayed as a journalist, it seems like an opportunity lost.
  6. Sujoy, like Madhur Bhandarkar may be at risk of falling into a thinking trap of trying to use familiar settings or characters.
  7. The forced climax which makes one wonder as to why does Inderjeet have to go through all that trouble? The same effect could have been achieved without all that drama.

In summary, the movie is definitely worth a watch and one will not be disappointed. However the comparison with the earlier one are inevitable and that is why it falls a shade short of being awesome.

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