Parineeta

[No spoilers in it...]

Watched Parineeta yesterday at Satyam. Contrary to the reviews that I'm now reading, I didn't find it too special. There were some glaring loopholes in screenplay and direction, and sadly, they were too obvious.

Pradeep Sarkar (Director) has some good work to his credit prior to Parineeta. 'Piya basanti' and a couple of commercials with Aamir Khan for coke being notable. But there are some other forgettable ones too, like Rani Mukherjees 'munch' TVC. So for me, Sarkar started with a clean slate.

And after Parineeta ended, I felt Sarkar had done some of his homework but surely not all of it. Artwork and sets were brilliant throughout. Cinematography was OK. Performances were competent. Music was good if not great. But there were a lot of pitfalls. One thing that constantly irritated was the near flawless and contemporary diction of every english word by every single character. Considering Parineeta is set in 60's Calcutta (it wasn't Kolkata then!), there was hardly a touch of bengali and that period in the dialog. I've never been to W.Bengal and I haven't read the novel but I'm not sure if I agree with the general 'sensibilty' of the characters in the movie. It seemed a lot modern to me. And some characters were real caricatures, not sure what Diya Mirza and Raima Sen were doing in the movie.

All that notwithstanding, the highlight of Parineeta was Vidya Balan. Her expressive eyes were a treat to watch and she put in a flowing and almost flawless performance. This role fit her to the tee. Saif Khan's frown, BTW, is getting too repetitive.

That apart, Parineeta is based on a Sarat Chandra novel, so was Devdas. And so comparison is inevitable. Devdas published in 1901, Parinita in 1914. But the recent movies based on these two novels are quite contrasting in treatment.

I never liked Devdas, but after Parineeta, my opinion has changed. Nautanki-like alright, but seeing Devdas, you can feel the huge amount of effort that has been put to create the right setting, in forms of script, screenplay and artwork. There is an effort to develop each character (which explains its long length). And of course, Bhansali being a master technician helped. Compared to it, Parineeta seemed like an adaptation, and a modest one at that.

I guess I was in one of my more cynical moods when I watched Parineeta. Its not that its a bad movie but it just didn't click with me. Still, hype notwithstanding, probably worth a try.