One aspect I always admire about Shoojit Sircar's films, may it be the impressive Vicky Donor, the compassionate Yahaan or the gripping Madras Cafe, is his empathetic approach towards his characters. Sircar isn't one who approves of his characters being cardboard cutouts that we have to buy as human beings while using his flair to propel the story. He imbues them with real feeling, allows us to witness them go from being personae to people we know, and have always known. It is this compassion that sets him apart from his peers.
I have always believed that a film tends to get immeasurably and mysteriously more enchanting when the director has great empathy for his characters.
Piku might just be Sircar's best yet, and though it evidently lacks a coherent story -- not that it needs it, really -- it finds a great deal of warmth in a dotard's gastric troubles.
If crowd-pleasers are the need of the hour, this sure is one to laud. Like an old-fashioned auteur, Sircar uses quaint locales of New Delhi that have a quiet dignity and populates it with his characters and the subtlest of details. The nuances are often so marvelous both in the art design and performances that one doesn't really need to take the effort to dig into this concoction; Sircar manages to fling us right in the middle of the morning troubles of a familiar Bengali family by skillfully manipulating a terse conversation. A waspish old hypochondriac and his daughter bicker over his diet and his imaginary constipation problems before she heads off to her office, but it is enough to brief us about the relationship they share. Juhi Chaturvedi, also the screenwriter of Vicky Donor, pens this brisk opener that probes gently but deeply into their lives, and never presents us with a shallow sequence as the story matures into something more dense. It is writing of the highest order. Each scene is utilized to flesh the characters out, bring out a detail we had not noticed about them and acquaint ourselves with them better.
Although Piku toys with the familiar here, it has the rare quality of being entirely unpredictable. Essentially a heartwarming father-daughter story, there's a gorgeous sequence early into the film where Bhashkor, the sullen old man, has too much to drink and begins frolicking in the middle of the night. His daughter, at first reproachful but then can't help but smile at the sight, regards him silently as a parent would regard their child from the door of the room, heads back to her own and twirls around for a bit. Volumes of sentiment is captured in a few seconds of subdued imagery, and it made me want to cheer loudly. Like the film itself, it's a celebration of the imprint of childhood inside each one of us, and the sudden feeling of realizing its existence.
And these magical bits keep dropping.
There's a likable madness about the old man, but the daughter panders to his every request even when she feels it's a waste of time. When the film transcends briefly into the road-movie territory, he begins singing and she joins in discreetly. To an outsider, it seems like a dysfunctional family trying to keep to itself, experimenting with the very definition of conventional, but to them it is a routine they have been maintaing for a long time. Sircar's and Chaturvedi's triumph here is that the audience is never made to feel as if they are scrutinizing an unorthodox, reclusive family. To make Piku a noteworthy attempt as an offbeat comedy-drama, the quirky potential of the story is never exploited. Instead, it is treated as one would treat a more conventional drama that involves an eccentric family.
Sircar only plays to his strengths here. He has the ability to keeps a carefree tone throughout, even when the characters discuss some rather weighty themes, and employs very little to no melodrama to make an impact. The scenes do not linger longer than it is necessary. This tautness gives Piku its zing that even a well-cut thriller rarely provides by burning through a bag of tricks. This is old school filmmaking.
The performances need to be exacting, carefully spontaneous and multilayered to make a film like this work, and the cast performs small marvels. This definitely is the most well-acted Hindi film of the year till now, but there is an actor who stands out among them all. Amitabh Bachchan, the veteran who is probably in the most diverse phase of his career currently -- and what a fine, fine career he has had! -- turns Bhashkor into one of the most winsome characters I have seen in Hindi films recently, and each moment of his screen time is one to cherish. He's gullible, acid-tongued, delightful, chatty, unapologetically proud of his heritage and overly protective of his daughter, much like any 70 year-old senile person, and Bachchan's earnest, flawless performance is one of his very best. He pulls off each variation fantastically. Bhashkor's silent acceptance of his daughter as the mother figure in his life is handled with real delicateness, and Sircar deserves pats on his back for that.
My only grouse -- and this is only nitpicking -- is that a film like this needs to be shorter, not as prolonged as Piku is. And it drags a wee bit towards the end with repeated but admittedly amusing conversations tackling the different ways a person can defecate, but their very presence does not serve any purpose.
Ultimately, Piku is nothing but a crowd-pleaser that hinges on nostalgia and pits enjoyable characters against each other to fulfill the void of entertainment. And in that respect, it is a smashing success.
As if the scene featuring an intoxicated Bhashkor dancing wasn't enough to soak up, there's a sublime sequence at the end that shows him cycling through the teeming, pastel streets of Kolkata. I would pay a fortune to be at the place where the idea for that sequence was conceived.
(Not For Reproduction)
I have always believed that a film tends to get immeasurably and mysteriously more enchanting when the director has great empathy for his characters.
Piku might just be Sircar's best yet, and though it evidently lacks a coherent story -- not that it needs it, really -- it finds a great deal of warmth in a dotard's gastric troubles.
If crowd-pleasers are the need of the hour, this sure is one to laud. Like an old-fashioned auteur, Sircar uses quaint locales of New Delhi that have a quiet dignity and populates it with his characters and the subtlest of details. The nuances are often so marvelous both in the art design and performances that one doesn't really need to take the effort to dig into this concoction; Sircar manages to fling us right in the middle of the morning troubles of a familiar Bengali family by skillfully manipulating a terse conversation. A waspish old hypochondriac and his daughter bicker over his diet and his imaginary constipation problems before she heads off to her office, but it is enough to brief us about the relationship they share. Juhi Chaturvedi, also the screenwriter of Vicky Donor, pens this brisk opener that probes gently but deeply into their lives, and never presents us with a shallow sequence as the story matures into something more dense. It is writing of the highest order. Each scene is utilized to flesh the characters out, bring out a detail we had not noticed about them and acquaint ourselves with them better.
Although Piku toys with the familiar here, it has the rare quality of being entirely unpredictable. Essentially a heartwarming father-daughter story, there's a gorgeous sequence early into the film where Bhashkor, the sullen old man, has too much to drink and begins frolicking in the middle of the night. His daughter, at first reproachful but then can't help but smile at the sight, regards him silently as a parent would regard their child from the door of the room, heads back to her own and twirls around for a bit. Volumes of sentiment is captured in a few seconds of subdued imagery, and it made me want to cheer loudly. Like the film itself, it's a celebration of the imprint of childhood inside each one of us, and the sudden feeling of realizing its existence.
And these magical bits keep dropping.
There's a likable madness about the old man, but the daughter panders to his every request even when she feels it's a waste of time. When the film transcends briefly into the road-movie territory, he begins singing and she joins in discreetly. To an outsider, it seems like a dysfunctional family trying to keep to itself, experimenting with the very definition of conventional, but to them it is a routine they have been maintaing for a long time. Sircar's and Chaturvedi's triumph here is that the audience is never made to feel as if they are scrutinizing an unorthodox, reclusive family. To make Piku a noteworthy attempt as an offbeat comedy-drama, the quirky potential of the story is never exploited. Instead, it is treated as one would treat a more conventional drama that involves an eccentric family.
Sircar only plays to his strengths here. He has the ability to keeps a carefree tone throughout, even when the characters discuss some rather weighty themes, and employs very little to no melodrama to make an impact. The scenes do not linger longer than it is necessary. This tautness gives Piku its zing that even a well-cut thriller rarely provides by burning through a bag of tricks. This is old school filmmaking.
The performances need to be exacting, carefully spontaneous and multilayered to make a film like this work, and the cast performs small marvels. This definitely is the most well-acted Hindi film of the year till now, but there is an actor who stands out among them all. Amitabh Bachchan, the veteran who is probably in the most diverse phase of his career currently -- and what a fine, fine career he has had! -- turns Bhashkor into one of the most winsome characters I have seen in Hindi films recently, and each moment of his screen time is one to cherish. He's gullible, acid-tongued, delightful, chatty, unapologetically proud of his heritage and overly protective of his daughter, much like any 70 year-old senile person, and Bachchan's earnest, flawless performance is one of his very best. He pulls off each variation fantastically. Bhashkor's silent acceptance of his daughter as the mother figure in his life is handled with real delicateness, and Sircar deserves pats on his back for that.
My only grouse -- and this is only nitpicking -- is that a film like this needs to be shorter, not as prolonged as Piku is. And it drags a wee bit towards the end with repeated but admittedly amusing conversations tackling the different ways a person can defecate, but their very presence does not serve any purpose.
As if the scene featuring an intoxicated Bhashkor dancing wasn't enough to soak up, there's a sublime sequence at the end that shows him cycling through the teeming, pastel streets of Kolkata. I would pay a fortune to be at the place where the idea for that sequence was conceived.
(Not For Reproduction)
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