Friday, January 19, 2018

Review: MY BIRTHDAY SONG


Idea Accha Hai. Much Required In Its Execution

2 stars

Mini Review:

Is it is guilt for the one sexual encounter that keeps Rajeev
Kaul awake or has he really killed the girl? The film is a
psychological thriller which is rather interesting, but feels
dragged despite its short running time of 95 minutes. Sanjay
Suri looks traumatised enough as Rajeev Kaul but is that
enough? This film has a decent supporting cast but needed a
huge pay-off at the end. So much thrill for so little an end…

Main Review:

First time director Samir Soni makes an interesting point
with this psychological thriller: Is Rajeev Kaul’s guilt about a
passionate encounter with a stranger driving him crazy?
Or has he really not done anything and is stressing out for no
reason at all?

It’s Rajeev’s 40th birthday and the weather is odd. It’s raining in
December. And Rajeev is feeling like a man out of place at his
own party. The problem here is that there’s no explanation given
why. We have to assume. And if these are not his friends, why
has his wife Ritu invited them? The guests at the party say inane
things (expositions, really) like, ‘He made so much money in
advertising that he bought this farmhouse.’

They introduce the seductress (Nora Fatehi) as, ‘My sister’s friend’.
Who brings their sister’s friend to a party? It just sounds wrong in
Hindi on many levels.

The Groundhog Day idea of repeating the events again and
again in order to make us begin to believe there is a possibility
that something big is about to happen. We get to see plenty of
weird: The appearance of Pitobash in odd situations makes us
believe that is Pitobash actually appeared in your life (even as a
friend), then there’s something seriously wrong with it. The other
thing about this repetition of events, we get to see Sanjay Suri
drive and drive and drive and drive his car. In inadvertent lighter
moment as an audience, you begin to feel like the harassed Delhi
commuter, but the drive scenes do nothing to push the story
forward. Neither does he have any epiphany about his situation.
It’s just driving around.

The idea that the girl seems to meet the same end, no matter what
should have been shown more instead of him driving again and
again. That would give us a deeper concept of ‘Karma’  and how
‘debts need to be paid’ that the film is attempting to tell. But the
filmmaker adds inane things like Rajeev suspecting his wife of
infidelity because he has cheated himself seems really trite.
And the film ends rather tamely even though it could have been
a powerful and emotional payoff.

It’s a great attempt. But the film had a long way to go on script
level before it became awesome. The music is unusual and
different from the elevator music that cinema today is churning
out by the heap.


(this review appears on www.nowrunning.com)

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