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*YUCK **WHATEVER ***GOOD ****SUPER *****AWESOME
Unfaithfully yours...
Bewafaa**
CBFC Rating: U
Dir: Dharmesh Darshan
Cast: Anil Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Akshay Kumar
This is what, by strict dictionary definition, they call a Bollywood blockbuster.
Heavy dialogue interplays, a grand house with two staircases leading up to a common corridor and a stadium-sized living room, and honourable homilies on how family comes first and God is great… you know what I mean.
Dharmesh means to take us through a darshan of, besides Montreal, aspects that made his last two hits (Dhadkan, Raja Hindustani) a skewed conflict in relationships, or an emotional entertainer, as they say. And this one concerns Aditya (Kapoor) who marries his deceased wife's sister Anjali (Kareena).
There are two thorns in what should have been a bed of roses: One, the omnipresence of the dead wife (Sushmita Sen), due to which the current family lives under the shadow of an unfortunate past. Two, Anjali's boyfriend (Kumar), who returns to her life.
Linking the plot to Gumraah, as was previously purported, may be a disservice to B R Chopra's intensely dramatic 1963 film. For Bewafaa picks from many past sources, and in a sense, picks up from the point Sooraj Barjatya's Hum Aapke Hain Kaun left off.
And here lies the obvious glare: Kareena's well-enacted key character, unlike Madhuri's in the 1994 blockbuster, remains alarmingly unexplained.
First head-over-heels over husband-to-be (Khanna), immediately later, automatically agreeable to marriage with her bro-in-law, then seen trying to impress her husband, immediately later, veering towards ex-boyfriend.
While you aren't sure of her mind, you're not sure of her screen-husband's (Kapoor) motivations either.
As the film finally concludes (whoever the eventual winner), you are treated to a long justification spiel — this time, with one of the leading men directly talking to the audience!
Given its popular persuasion, the film should also be judged for its immensely able actors, who effectively translate the melodrama on screen (Kapoor in particular), and the mellifluous, massy music scored by Nadeem-Shravan, though comedy as the essential masala component is conspicuously missing in this compendium.
Bewafaa is what film traders conjecture in hushed tones over, "Hit hai jee?" The rest, supposedly, does not matter. |
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