Cinema fascinates, provokes, inspires and entertains more powerfully than any other media. Shaaditimes seeks to understand and interpret human relationships in all its nuances.
What better way to explore these intricacies than reviewing films that explore the agonies and ecstasies of human relationships?
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Eros Entertaintment
Cheeni Kum
Producer: Sunil Manchanda
Director: R. Balki
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Tabu, Zohra Sehgal, Paresh Rawal, Swini Khara
Music: Ilyaraja
Its fresh, spicy and raw... don't miss it!
Totally sugar-free and engaging from start to finish, R. Balki's '
Cheeni Kum' is a treat for all those who love sarcastic humour and a smart manner of storytelling which shows more than it speaks. Love, characters, emotions, all come together without a hitch in one of the finest examples of storytelling we have seen in recent times.
The story is about a man-woman relationship, with age playing the spoiler. Buddhadev Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan), master chef, 64 and Nina Verma (Tabu), a tourist from India in London, 34, meet and fall in love. What ensues is a charming tale of attraction, courtship, man-woman chemistry, inequities of age, parental opposition and the subsequent happy ending. Nothing remarkable as far as the story goes. The context of age-mismatched couple-in-love is the pivot on which the story hinges. What is remarkable is the treatment, that sets the movie a class apart.
The best thing about '
Cheeni Kum' is that though it couches an important issue within its storytelling it is actually a simple story of love and the genders. A woman who finds a man worthy of her attentions and a man who finds a woman worthy of his.
Cheeni Kum, in that sense demystifies love and marriage in its effort to prove that the brouhaha about age and relationships is a lot of hot air. Whether it succeeds or not is left to the context of the viewer but the filmmaker tries his best, going from funny to preachy in trying to achieve it.
The structure of the film is linear and begins with the first meeting of the two, to their falling in love to convincing her father about their decision. The period where the couple falls in love is as enjoyable to the audience as it is to the on-screen pair. The movie gets its maximum marks there. It changes tracks post interval once the parent in question comes in with the opposition. The director manages to maintain the semi-light, tongue-in-cheek tone and salvages situations that would otherwise demand dollops of glycerin and tissues. Thank God for a director who knows what he wants to say, and how.
