Manmarziyaan

Manmarziyaan - Movie Review

The eternal chaos called love, is what Manmarziyaan tries to encapsulate.  The confused state of mind when in love, the thin lines of right or wrong which frequently gets blurred, and the fragility of life decisions we often take, Anurag Kashyap has managed to portray the catastrophic events in lives of people in love, beautifully.

After a while, Anurag managed to impress me within last two weeks, as an actor in the Tamil film, Imaikkaa Nodigal (check out the blog for Imaikkaa Nodigal’s review) with his effortless acting and now as a director with Manmarziyaan, by portraying the complexities of the feeling called love, successfully. When an about to be thirty me, wanted to dismiss the film as unrealistic, my 20 plus heart who went through catastrophic life events due to the same destructive, yet enriching feeling called love, vouched for the film as the justifiable portrayal of souls messed up in real life.

Manmarziyaan is a mess (quite literally towards the end :P) but is a refreshing take on love and relationships. The concept is conventional of a love triangle but the portrayals of characters and their treatment is original and relatable. It is tempting at various junctures to pass off the movie as too mature to be realistic especially Abhishek’s Character, but as much as we might hate to admit, this is a reality too.

The story revolves around Rumi (Taapsee Pannu) and Vicky (Vicky Kaushal), the rebels without a cause in love and Robbie (Abhishek Bachchan), the too good to be true yet the sweetest and mature character of the plot. Rumi and Vicky’s love is real and unapologetic and showcases every reality of the generation’s love life, sex, immaturity, commitment issues and shattering life’s reality check-ins.

Writer Kanika Dhillon has layered each character and developed the plot so well and a bit too much in detail that the whole movie portrays an in-depth exploration of love and the mistakes we commit in love. 

The central casting of the three major characters are brilliant, to say the least. Taapsee as Rumi, the unapologetic, fierce and sometimes unreasonable small-town girl, is one of my favorite performances of her career. Vicky aka Sandhu ka ladka, as the typical Punjabi Munda with no actual control over his life, is played brilliantly by Vicky Kaushal. I am so looking forward to more of his talent ahead. 

Last but not the least is, Abhishek Bachchan as Robbie, the perfect marriage suitor coming into the plot because of an accidentally arranged, marriage proposal, caused out of rage. He plays the good guy with such clever restraint that it will make you want to scream for him. 

He, at least for me is the kind of men that we really need, who is subtle, sensitive yet knows what he really wants and stands to fight for it, without any hulla about it.  

All the three characters of the plot are not someone you can feel sorry for neither are they likable at first, but they are so real, complicated and portrays elements from all our of real lives that you cannot hate them either.

Music by Amit Trivedi is fresh and a perfect fit to the storyline, though I felt the background score did try to spoon-feed emotions a bit at few plots. The soundtracks will stay with you even after the movie, Daryaa and Sachi Mohabath is already on loop in my playlist.

You will see Anurag’s elements from previous movies, especially DevD, strewed in here and there, which were more or less repetitive. At the same time, there is the beauty of giving even the supporting characters moments that last like, Vicky’s father giving a reality check to Vicky about his life choices or Rumi’s grandfather trying to converse to Rumi through eyes, that if she was ok are sweet points that stayed with me. 

The climax scene between Rumi and Robbie having a long exchange of dialogue over a walk back home was a delight to watch and to be honest a much-needed break for the pace of the movie which went messier in the second half as the emotions get into more complexities.

After Dev D, Manmarziyaan is one realistic love story which came out of Bollywood after a long time, without its typical sanitizations of emotions and characters. To put it short, as Ananya Bhattacharya from India Today posted, “Manmarziyaan gives women their DevD”.

P.S.: Picture Courtesy- FilmiBeat, IMDb, Hindustaan, Youtube