Review: BIOSCOPEWALA

If It Ain't Broke...

1.5 stars

Mini Review:

Based on a wonderful story ‘Kabuliwala’ by Rabindranath

Tagore, this story turns a dry-fruit vendor into a

Bioscopewala, and Minnie and her dad into this modern

dysfunctional family. It is not just a stretch but the whole

film is about Minnie rediscovering ‘facts’ that everyone and

their popcorn in the audience has already guessed. You

want to slap Minnie many times, but Danny as Bioscopewala

wins your hearts…

Main Review:

Minnie (Geetanjali Thapa) has to fly down to Kolkata from Paris

because her father Robi Basu (Adil Hussain, in a short sweet

role), is feared dead in a plane crash. The plane was flying to

Kabul and the family retainer Bhola (played wonderfully as

always by Brijendra Kala) brings her back home from the airport.

She’s hot and irritated and does not like that the airlines does not

know what and whys of the plane’s disappearance. Minnie

comes across as all-curly hair and pretty face and self absorbed

because she has to deal with this ‘nonsense’. She is shown at

first to ignore her father’s call (father sits down at the airport and

writes a letter to her! Of course they haven’t heard of emails!).

Of course she tells the boyfriend she’s irritated by it all. Her father

has been stern to her and she gets flashbacks of going into the

photo studio and being scolded…

Now she has to deal with the police, the airlines and even

unscrupulous lawyers who want to cash in on the tragedy. The

cops are there to drop off an old man in their house. Apparently

the father had fought for the custody of the old man for years

and years. Brijendra Kala too is unable to say who the old man

Rehmat Khan is. Because Minnie is too self absorbed to find out

who and why the old man was a subject of her father’s

fascination. She just wants the old man out.

Danny Denzongpa plays the old man Rehmat Khan. He suffers

from Alzheimer's and the way Minnie treats someone she doesn’t

know, makes you want to slap her hard. Danny is a gem. He

emotes so well and carries the past on his shoulders magnificently.

The flashbacks show us how amazing an actor he is. He’s pining

away for his daughter who is the same age as Minnie, and despite

all these years in prison, she is still the child he has left behind

and so is Minnie.

Minnie gets her father’s belongings and conducts the last rites.

Very reluctantly. She even tells people who have gathered home

that she is not connected for years with her dad. What we want to

know is why she has not opened her dad’s belongings collected

from the airlines’ office?

There are a lot of annoying things like that in the movie. If she

doesn’t want to deal with Rehmat Khan, she could easily drop him

off at some old folks home or some hospice. Why is she looking

for people who knew him? Brijendra Kala could have told her the

man was her childhood Bioscopewala! The poor retainer takes

her all over the place while she is trying to ascertain if Rehmat

Khan is innocent or no. That brings in Tisca Chopra and sundry

other people who talk about Rehmat Khan. After what seems like a

dumb pointless trip to Kabul (where she finds amid the rubble of

Rehmat Khan’s village the signboard of the cinema he ran until the

Taliban took over! At this point you want to throw something at

the screen because you have suspended your disbelief too

much). She’s so self-absorbed, even when the boyfriend shows up

in Kabul, she doesn’t even hug him!

Thankfully for one lucid moment Danny makes you forget the

stupidities of Minnie. And the credits roll. You come away

wondering how they took a wonderful story and spat out a

stupid version. Bring Balraj Sahni’s Kabuliwala (Bimal Roy

directs!) back, I say!  

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)