![]() Debutant director Sharat Katariya is a diligent steadfast storyteller. What works forcefully in the film's favour is its disarming simplicity. The rather self-conscious finale is sadly a cinematic necessity that happily, doesn't take away from the film's utterly unselfconscious weightless debate on marriages being made in heaven or hell. The slender story of a newly married couple struggling to find a common ground in a crowded stifling low middle class family is reminiscent of Basuda's "Piya Ka Ghar" and of course "Sara Akaash". These are people who don't really care about how much they weigh as long as they can forge some meaning out of their meager existence.īrilliantly shot in musty rusted shades of renewable decadence, DLKH brings back the quaint endearing romance of Basu Chatterjee's cinema. We feel the atmosphere in every character's existence. Here the aroma of the 1990s pervades the screen in intangible wafts. ![]() In that sense this film differs widely from Ayushmann's previous release "Hawaizaada" where the period flavour was pronounced and pungent. Though set in the pre-cellphone, VHS, audio cassette era, "DLKH" carries the weight of its periodicity very lightly, almost jauntily. The writing is so fluent robust and rooted to the milieu that we never feel the weight of nostalgia in the words. "Why don't you two also go in for a divorce right now?" Prem suggests with saddening sarcasm. Later there's smartly humorously written courtroom sequence where during a divorce proceeding, Prem's mother (Alka Amin) brings up the issue of a woman's compromises to keep domesticity intact. The film mocks feminist ideology without resorting to crass strokes of aggression. So is the activist-lawyer who seems to enjoy separating Sandhya from her husband. That moment is treated like a dismissive joke. One of the film's many warmly meditative moments occur when Sandhya's mother tries to hurriedly lecture her about how much a woman must endure to keep a marriage together. Fiery and obstinate Sandhya leaves her 'sasural' and returns home. But it's he who blushes like one," Sandhya (Bhumi) tells her curious friend who calls on the landline (this is 1995) to know what happened on the suhaag raat.Ī majority of the first half is taken up in showing how Sandhya builds a bridge of confidence with her reluctant bridegroom, only to discover he is not worth it. And we don't mean into the narrow doors and gallis of Haridwar where she moves with the counter-clumsy certainty and dignity of a woman who knows her weight is not going to let her become anyone's dream woman, not even her dear beloved husband who after a drink or two describes as a "moti bhains" in front of his friends. ![]() Uncannily, Ayushmann with his slouched obduracy reminded me of Rakesh Pandey in Basu Bhatterjee's "Sara Akaash", the newly-married chap who won't talk to his wife because, well, she doesn't quite fit. Newcomer "with a commodious qammara" Bhumi Pedneker is the educated aggressive girl who doesn't believe in taking it lying down from her newly married husband. Ayushmanna Khurrana is the under-educated Kumar Sanu fan from Haridwar who doesn't seem to have much ambition in life except to marry a pretty girl. It's very interesting to see how comfortably the very talented Sanjay Mishra and Seema Pahwa who played the lead in Rajat Kapoor's highly-lauded "Ankhon Dekhi" last year, fit into the peripheral parts of the hero's father and heroine's mother in "Dum Laga Ke Haisha (DLKH)".Ĭome to think of it, 20 years ago, Mishra and Pahwa could have comfortably played the lead of an uncomfortably married couple here. ![]() Film: "Dum Laga Ke Haisha" Cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Bhumi Pedneker Written and Directed by Sharat Katariya.
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