Mithya

Indian Cinema is going places. People with a good story to say in an Indian context have good buyers now. Actors who may play small roles in big budget commercial movies have a way of making a name for themselves. All thanks to a bunch of convention defying in your face film-makers and multiplex audience who have no qualms about paying 200 bucks as long as they get something fresh every weekend. 5 years ago a movie like Mithya would have a very limited audience and even more limited number of buyers. Now thankfully things are different. Rajat Kapoor has taken a leaf out of the great Kurosawa’s book of greatness and paid a great tribute to his Kagemusha, another film that almost didn’t get made but for the timely intervention of George Lucas and Coppola. I still don’t know how to describe this movie. Dual role: no. I guess living in the shadows of someone else would be better. Ranvir Shorey plays a struggling actor who as luck or in this case bad luck would have it has a great identical twin like resemblance to the current underworld don. Now when the don is shot dead a few of the rival gang members hire him to impersonate him so they can become the de-facto rulers of the underworld. The whole elaborate training schedule is full of fun and has too many quirks which in this case I truly enjoyed. Now here’s the thing. How a man behaves in front of his hench men, outsiders is well known. But how does he behave with his immediate family members. Especially his wife and kids. Now to get over this small glitch we are told that in the accident that nearly killed him our don lost his memory. So now whatever he does is ok. But what is absolutely over the top maverick twist of all twists is that he actually loses his memory in a freak accident in a bar. Now he himself doesn’t remember anything, all the elaborate planning and training has been purged from his memory. We see him adjust to his new family and surprise his wife and kids with a new found tenderness and dare I say love. At some point I even believed that there might be a happy ending for our hero. But then he takes too many liberties with his role and the conspirators who somehow can’t obviously let him live in peace ruin everything by leaking the news. The movie is full such madcap brilliance. Never before I think has a man on celluloid been so confused with his identity. So lonely, so scared and so happy also to finally have people care so much for him. Ranvir Shorey has delivered a masterful performance. Please oh please give him something this year. All the supporting cast must have been so happy with their roles that I don’t think anyone charged any money. I’m sure Naseer Sahab has stopped taking money from these new age film makers on the promise that they would give him atleast some role in their movies. I mean he must be so happy to play roles now that actually use atleast some of his skills. All in all we need more movies of this kind which make movie watching so much fun. It’s not the laugh out loud kind of fun, it’s the oh I want to get out my laptop and start writing a new story kind of mind triggering fun. Just imagine how much fun it is to even write a story like this let alone make a film out of it.