Mausam gone bad.

Pankaj Kapur’s directorial debut – Mausam - starts off by being intriguingly fresh and sparky and snowballs into a cold, hard, rolling-downwards, tonking-bluntly-on-your-head kind of, well, Snow-ball. From being light and likable it metamorphoses into being completely irritating and implausible right in front of your eyes. And the premise which leads it to such a state is made up by the help many aspects – The protagonists, among them, being the main contributors.


Shahid Kapur portrays the role of a youthful, vibrant Punjabi munda, living his life on the edge in the fictional town of Mallukot – a character-sketch he wades through with cheek and vigour. His surroundings are just as common as any right out of umpteen Bollywood flicks based out of similar sounding locations, but still, thanks to veteran Pankaj Kapur’s eye, embodied in an unmarked, warm cutesiness of heart and flavor. And extra marks to Binod Pradhan for his camerawork where he fluidly blends in and makes the medium of transfer of images into being a part of that very imagery. The quintessential banter of the elderly gents and ladies of the small town is again similar in depth of the texture but still remarkably different and watchable. The songs set in this location too are gut-thumping when they wish to be so and soulful when they want to be so. The character curve of mostly all the actors on screen is aptly sketched. At this point in time, one is implicitly urged to presume that, barring a few unrelated Sonam Kapoor-esque scream-y outburst and/or giggles, the experience can only head northward thenceforth. Unfortunately, that is where the good news ends.


The underplaying carpet of the story is one which would sound a brilliant piece of writing in terms of vision that’s required to be summoned for such a script: A tale of love and lovelorn-ness, woven on the platform of milestones of erupting communal/regional/national/international chaos of Human existence, traversing a span of over a decade and places from Punjab-Scotland-America-Switzerland-Punjab-Ahmedabad (and I think one more Europian nation I just can’t seem to place), ultimately leading to a La Happily-Ever-After end.  But where it eats major mud is in the Editing department. 


It takes a quantum jump from Mallukot to Scotland. And the Bizzaro-ride begins. Cut to 7 years ahead – Our Mr. Protagonist is an IAF pilot, who tends to walk with a rod straight spine, and sports a tiny moustache, grits his teeth often, and tries to speak with Victorian grandeur of expression. But instead he turns out to be one of the most bothersome elements up on the screen. His take-no-prisoners no-nonsense exterior is a far cry from everything that is convincing whether in form or in substance. In gist - way too self-serious to be taken seriously. Our exquisitely named – Aayat (Sonam Kapur) lacks the maturity required to portray the demeanor expected of her in such a setting. One moment she is a Shop-owner selling Kashmiri shawls and the next a Ballet student/teacher (We are never told) and next movement an Opera-Show ticket seller! The story changes her job faster than what an entry level Software Engineer would in Pvt. Sector India. 


The love-story, which supposedly is the basis of the entailing shenanigan, is portrayed to have gone awry purely because of under-communication. In an age ridden with ever/over-present electronic communication channels, we are told to believe that the boy and the girl couldn’t convene just due to lack of forwarding addresses and an bitter-internally, unrequited-love struck dame. And when they, somehow inexplicably, do get hold of each other in some other nation 3000 miles from the other, they coyly retreat just when they shouldn’t. And when this act begins to get played again and again you just stop giving a damn about letter piling over in an unpopulated-now courtyard. And even if one does manage to overlook this massive oversight, one just can’t bring themselves to finding even an inkling of chemistry between the lead pair. 


The story curve too gets frustrated of itself and dumbs down the Gujarat Riot act to such ridiculous end that it tries to redeem and vindicate itself by using a lost, supposedly orphan girl child and a white Horse. And I am not even kidding. 


All in all, it is a film which had the heart-of-gold on paper but played out exactly as a limpy handicap with an artery blockage on the screen. It has its moment of poised poignancy and some really attention-grabbing breezy flashes. But as a whole it leaves a bland taste in your mouth and bad back-ache to carry back from the movie-hall after having spent upwards of three hours in-there.