His Master's Toys

POV shot from inside a regular cab in Mumbai, the windshield wipers, the rain, the voice of the woman holding the camera and talking to the cabbie. Then the car stops, a street-kid enters the frame begging for money, and when she realizes that she’s facing the camera, she breaks into a jig. Moments later, when artist Arun talks about his latest work during a gallery exhibition, he mentions the people who make the city and toasts ‘To Mumbai, my …, my whore, my lover’. And so begins Dhobi Ghat, or, Mumbai Dairies, if you may.

I knew little of Dhobi Ghat before I entered the theater, except for snippets  I picked up from Anjan Das’ review of the film in between fragments of family conversation. This has been the longest I had gone without entering the theater - its been six months since I watched Inception in London - partly due to personal dramas, and partly due to severe lack of good contemporary cinema. Anjan Das, a filmmaker himself, writes in his review the reason he makes films - the urge to follow life as it lurches through, not on a glossy canvas, but in all its gritty reality, capturing fragments in a fractured narrative, reconstructing realities as we face the next. It is with this spirit that Kiran Rao, the debutante filmmaker, also the wife of Aamir Khan, decides to frame the film. 

Through seamlessly intertwined narratives of four different characters, juxtaposition of handheld POV filmmaking and highly calculated frames, narratives that touch upon completely different stratas of society, the film manages to capture a Bombay that we exist in everyday, yet rarely, if ever, see on celluloid. Its style immediately reminds of Amores Perros, or Babel, and I have a feeling that its resemblance is not just a coincidence. In fact, it has even been scored by Gustavo Santallola, the legendary composer who has been behind numerous South American, Mexican, and Hollywood productions, including the two mentioned above.  

I was pleasantly surprised to find Monica Dogra, who happens to be an acquaintance and from a band I know well, starring in the lead role. Just by being herself, she manages to pull off the act remarkably well. In fact, almost all performances do justice to the script, a credit that goes to the director as much as the actors. 

The film is not without its flaws. There are threads that go nowhere, and could have been easily taken out. There are moments of exaggeration that spoil the intended poetry. The pace could have been adjusted ever-so-slightly during editing, and it would have trumped one of its primary criticisms, the slow-paced narrative that loses the viewer once in a while. The character of the artist is a cliche, the tuft of white hair, the incessant cigarettes, his method of creating art. So on and so forth. 

However, there is that one rare ephemeral quality that helps overlook its glitches; it is a heartfelt film, one that has been made with the primary purpose of capturing aspects of life in the living breathing metropolis, and not just wish to rake in profits that Aamir’s brand is capable of generating, a film that is contemplative and honest, yet layered enough to warrant a revisit. Most importantly, it presents a challenging enough future for the upcoming directors, pushing the edges of indie filmmaking in India one notch further. 4 stars out of 5.