Director : Abhishek Kapoor
Producer: Ronnie Screwvala (RSVP Movies), Pragya Kapoor, Abhishek Kapoor (Guy in the Sky Pictures)
Screenwriter: Abhishek Kapoor & Kanika Dhillon
Cinematography:
Cast: Sushant Singh Rajput, Sara Ali Khan, Pooja Gor, Nitish Bharadwaj among others
The movie opens to a beautiful picturesque location of the Uttrakhand town, Kedarnath. The scenarios shown in the movie is simply beautiful. Having visited the Himalayan range of Sikkim in October this year, I was frequently transported to my memories of that place and could relate it to an extent.
The movie, from within the ten minutes of its screenplay, acquaints us with the theme -casteism and religiousness. The old woman refuses to trek the holy Kedarnath yatra on the back of a Mansoor Khan, a local porter, because he’s a Muslim. After her son cajoles her that he’ll take less amount, she finally agrees to it. Mansoor is a very chilled out localite, who does not take any offence in such things and also offers the them “prasad” free of cost and takes selfie with his riders.
Cut to Mandakini aka Mukku,a fiery adamant Hindu girl played by Sara Ali Khan. From he very offset, we know her acts are rebellious. She watches cricket religiously, mixes with men and remains undaunted even though her mother tells her to behave properly. There’s a tiff between her elder sister, Brinda played by Pooja Gor, over a love affair gone wrong but we really never get to know why and how that love affair actually happened. Mukku’s father is staunch holy man but he behaves everyone respectfully.
Acting as a backbone to the plot is a debate going on of setting up a hotel to accommodate tourists visit Kedarnath whereas the locales feels it will hinder their livelihood and also be dangerous owing to the heights the snow capped mountain of Uttrakhand.
Shifting us from the thinking much of the effects of over-tourism and actually going in depths, the movie shifts the focus to the two love birds. It’s a fresh feeling to see a woman wooing the man this time and I enjoyed every bit of it. Mukku is adamantly arrogant, even while flirting with Mansoor. Eventually, after repeated horse-rides and chai-ki-chuski dates, she does succeed in making him fall in love with her.
But acting as a real pooja, I mean pyaar, mein bhaada is Mukku’s sister Brinda, played by Pooja Gor, who threatens Mansoor that Mukku is just fooling around with him. Its an obvious shocker to him and he owes to keep distance but Mukku’s bravery and repeated attempts to persuade him to talk and baarish mein akhri boond tak bhigna melts him and he gives up. And here begins the feud in the love story. The plot takes a grim turn in reminding us with the horrific scenarios of the Uttrakhand floods of 2013. The sound effects used during this period is chilling and reminds us of the videos we’d seen or words we’ve read when the floods happened.
Web of Word’s perception: Let me be very honest, I am awed by Sara Ali Khan, mainly by her voice. Also I find her very relatable personally. Her role in the was convincing as a rebellious Mukku but there were some stances I thought it was too rebellious to be true, I mean it is practically not possible, but maybe that is what movies are for- making us believe in the impractical. Singh as a shy lover but an ardent one. Also I felt Brinda’s character should had a plausible story line and we as an audience were not given much information about her life. I also failed to connect to the love story in this drama lovestory but I liked Khan and Singh individually. The songs were good, mainly because the lyrics have been penned so beautifully. My favourite, definitely Qaafirana,
Rating: 6/10. 1 point transporting back to the snow capped mountains 😉
Watch thew movie by yourself and do let us know your perception of the movie! 🙂
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