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Following the accidental killing of his fiancée, Maya, Anand
is committed to a mental hospital apparently having lost his
memory or any recall of his deceased beloved. Anand spends
his time bucking the system, often with comic results. One
of his doctors turns out to be Sunil, a childhood friend.
Although Anand no longer recognises him, Sunil feels responsible
for his friend. He persuades the daughter of the clinics director
to work with Anand, but in the process the two fall in love...
Kyon
Ki is the 2005 film by Priyadarshan, a well respected
film maker. Whilst I would never pretend to be an expert in
Bollywood films (surely the name is redundant since they renamed
the city it was named after) I can still spot an extremely
flawed film. Forget the personal and professional disgust
at the treatment on the patients, ECT is used as a method
of punishment; the wards have guards who think nothing of
beating their charges, and the doctors behave in a manner
that makes you wonder why they even bothered to train.
The
biggest criticism of the film is that it's an unfocused rambling
mess. It can't make up its mind whether it's a drama, even
though it has stolen heavily from One Flew Over The Cuckoos
Nest, a comedy or a romance. It feels as if three films
have crashed together to produce a train wreck of a plot.
The
tragic story of Anand's pursuit of Maya, and her subsequent
demise, is ruined by presenting Anand, played by Salman Khan,
as a complete and irresponsible idiot. That's not to say that
there is anything wrong with Khans performance, he obviously
does what he can with the script, though it feels that they
most probably only started with the idea of a love story shoehorned
into a rip-off of Cuckoos Nest. There is little conviction
in Anand's final recovery, seconds after the kind ministrations
of Tanvi, played by Kareena Kapoor, brings his memory back
he's off dancing and declaring his love for the good doctor.
Surely he didn't get over the death, which drove him mad,
in the three minutes it took him to sing the song.
The
end of the film is unexpected and tragic - tragic also as
it was completely unnecessary. If you can swallow that Anand's
new found love for Tanvi has not only cured him of his madness
but also driven away his guilt over the death of Maya, fine,
but then the film should have ended there. Instead, the last
twenty minutes show an unremitting tragedy which doesn't sit
well with the light hearted touch of the rest of the film.
On
a lighter note, whoever did the subtitles really should have
asked someone whose first language was English to have a quick
read through. The funniest unintentional moment is when Sunil
is emotionally explaining, to the institutes director, his
former relationship with Anand. With the pained expression
of someone who has lost a childhood friend to madness he explains
that they were more than master and servant, more than friends.
In fact they were "bum chums". I nearly wet myself.
The
special features are, sad to say, nothing really special.
First off you get several trailers for the film, which is
fairly redundant if you have already seen the film. Secondly,
there are a number of short interviews with the director and
members of the cast. Lastly, you get two deleted scenes. These
scenes add nothing to the film and were not of a length that
their inclusion would have made any difference to such a long
sprawling movie.
Under 'Forthcoming' there is an extended trailer for another
film called Holiday though a quick look at the trailer
shows that it is appears to be little more than a remake of
Dirty Dancing. Has no one heard of the idea of copyright
laws?
Audio comes in a very pleasant 5.1 or stereo. The 5.1 does,
at times, make good use of the rear speakers to produce some
nice ambient moments. However, given that this is a musical,
the songs make the best use of the rears, regardless of whether
this is your type of musical you can't fault the producers
of the disc, the songs are crisp and toe tappingly clear.
One
of the things that I liked about the menu was that you could
either choose to jump into the film using the chapters or
go straight to the songs. There is the possibility of a little
confusion here if you don't read Hindi, as half the chapter
titles and all the song titles are in that language - though
there are enough English chapter headings to get you pretty
near to where you want to be.
The
print is nice and clear, as you would expect from a modern
film, there appeared to be no colour bleed or artefacts which
is good to see in a film that at times uses some quite vibrant
colours. The print is presented in a 16.9 ratio, which is
fine on a large television.
So,
this is not one of Priyadarshan's best films and probably
not one to start your appreciation of Hindi film making.
Charles
Packer
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