Bas Ek Pal

After running a good trailer and Aatif's intense "Tere Bin" I was kinda curious about Bas Ek Pal. It genuinely sounded like movie which will take a fine look at relationships. This is second film by director Onir whose last 'My Brother Nikhil' was critically acclaimed. While promoting this film I still remember Urmila saying "what I feel is best of this movie is even if characters are complex, situations are complex –but characters are written with clarity", after walking out of the hall I could only give a sarcastic smile to this statement. Only thing I like in this is its central twist which I suspected coming but forgot as time passed, some of its music and one of the relationships that happens after interval. That's the reason two and half stars are given.

We get to know Nikhil (Suri) is back from US to India after five years bumped into Urmila in a disc where she helps him to get into there. They like each other and start to play. Urmila pretends to be hard to get and Suri continue to peruse her. Rahul (Jimmy) and Nikhil are friends, Rahul is friend with Steve who is on down slope of his marriage with Ira(Juhi). Then an incident takes place which turns everything up side down. What happens after that is better left for interested viewers to go and figure out.

Bas EK Pal does wander in the relationship pitfalls - insecurity, paranoia, misunderstandings, jealousy, lust but it would have been effective if it's supported by a strong plot rather than a fate play. Lots of drama goes on screen but it fails to make us care for what is happening on screen. There are many ridiculous scenes when Nikhil only looks like psycho obsessive lover despite a man with so much of bad luck. He is supposed to be lead character but nothing we feel about him. And same is the story for other characters. We never feel for them. They are like born with worst luck in the world, tangled in such complex situation but still no. Why Nikhil is so deeply in love with her we never know. Is love at first sight is not enough to justify such a difficult subject? No. For other it will be revealing too much so I stop here.

Only thing it manages it way up is one of the relationships. Its central twist is good one and justifies its fate plot after first half. Aatif's 'Tere bin' is there when credits are rolling but audience has suffered enough and is too late till then.

When it comes to performances in such movies with such a subject - actors get chance to show what they are capable of but alas! Not even one of five has en-cashed this opportunity. Suri is capable actor and he has shown that in Zankaar Beats but here he is deadpan. Juhi, Jimmy and Rehmaan are OK. And Urmila- God, actress of her caliber who was brilliant in her last outings like Ek Haseena Thi (for me her best so far. Others are Rangeela and Kaun?) and Pinjar is a huge let down. She has made comeback after such a long break but looks like has caught rust.

Sorry to say Mr. Onir, like your characters bad luck for you and for us this time.

Bas Ek Pal is a film I was waiting to savor. I had heard so much about the excellence of this movie, about Onir's outstanding direction, about the wonderful cast. This was clearly a standout movie for the year 2006. Why? For so many reasons really.. Let me enumerate...

1. The movie started out really well, there was an atmosphere of impending doom throughout the film that was very well done. I felt like I was inside a Rohinton Mistry novel.

2. Some of the characters were ordinary and well etched.

3. The story twisted and turned and kept me engaged throughout.

4. The music was quite good (though the whole package not as powerful as the music in Woh Lamhe).

5. The movie boasted of some excellent performances.

A little plot outline:

Nikhil Kapoor (Sanjay Suri) goes to a night club, meets and it instantly captivated by Anamika (Urmila Matondkar). She is being elusive but is attracted to him. Nikhil's best friend Rahul (Jimmy Shergill) has a friend Steve (Rehaan Engineer) who is embroiled in marital strife with his wife Ira (Juhi Chawla). One day Rahul and Steve accompany Nikhil to the night club one day and there he meets Aanmika again, gets into a fight with her escort, and with the escort's gun accidentally shoots Rahul. That lands him up in jail where he suffers through much beating and abuse of the imaginable and unimaginable type. Eventually Ira works on his case and gets him bail. He is trying to figure out why his friends abandoned him and refuse to see him, Anamika is hooked up with the paraplegic Rahul, and Ira and Steve are still going at each other. One finds out that he was set up in the night club. That was apparent in the beginning itself, but now the details come out and the rest of the story is a fantastical resolution of the tangle everyone is embroiled in.

So what does one see on close scrutiny?

That Ira is too scared to leave her abusive husband, but not too scared to have an affair. After she finds out he knows about the affair, she is still able to rescue the man who was victimized by her husband, but is still unable to find the courage to leave the husband. He goes away for weeks on end when she has her affair but she does not leave him during these prolonged absences, instead she chooses a time when he is in town to finally muster up some courage. You learn that it is possible to plan a shooting using a gun carried by a person unknown to the planner. That a person who has an MBA from a US university and lived with his parents there, upon relocation does not have enough money to afford top notch legal representation. And so on and so forth. So yes, the plot is riddled with many such inconsistencies, and it is not about relationships at all. Ira is an abused spouse and yet lives with her abuser - that makes her an enabler but that aspect is never explored. Hers is the worst fleshed out character. Anamika is a very fickle frivolous person and do such people exist? Steve is an abuser and a real person. Rahul is a strange mix of victim, savior and avenger. Nikhil is the character that you sympathize with the most - he is not the protagonist, but a victim, the fulcrum around whom the story revolves, but he is a passive participant for the most part.

The performances:

Juhi is outstanding. What a way to re-emerge as a mature actress of note. She takes an ill drawn character and manages to infuse it with life and reality. She has the most scope for histrionics and yet never resorts to that - instead she is most understated and has maximum impact.

Urmila - well, I know I will get flak from her legion of fans but in the first part she is convincing as the peppy frivolous girl. Then the movie turns serious and Urmila loses it - she yells, sobs, screams and generally over-performs at every turn. In all fairness to Urmila - it is Juhi's underplayed acting that makes Urmila's look overdone, but there it is.

Sanjay Suri is quite good - I liked the character, and the way he performed it. He showed obsession, despair, terror and self-disgust with equal ease.

Jimmy Shergill was good. I saw a decent role competently done - nothing outstanding, nothing jarred.

Rehaan Engineer was okay - sort of easy to play bad man role.

About the direction.. I had heard so much about Onir and I think this was a very good effort. But this was by no means a flawless film. The story of ordinary characters stuck in some fantastical scenario was a problem for me. And the last 10 minutes were quite atrocious IMO. By the end I wanted the two remaining people to pick up the gun and BAM BAM! The setup was so mundane - it was all driven by jealousy? How fantastic is that! The bits in jail were extremely powerful. BTW guys just because it was a male being raped does not make it any outstanding act of bravery on the director's part. These things do happen, just as much as women getting raped and abused in custody - so what is the big deal here? Was Madhuri Dixit not shown to suffer through such and worse in Anjaam?

In the end I liked Bas Ek Pal for its unusual story, but I felt it fell short of the mark in many ways and failed to achieve greatness. Of all the performances Juhi was simply awesome - she made me give the film 8 stars.

As has happened so often before, the Indian reaction to this movie doesn't predict my reaction at all. I have to say that Urmila Matondkar makes the most interesting movies! Banaras, Bas Ek Pal, Main Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara, Ek Hasina Thi, Tehzeeb. There is a MINUTE number of artists in the India movie trade who can produce on that level over and over. But in this movie, she is matched with a fine cast. I'm not a great Jimmy Shergill fan, but I gotta say that drop him down with Urmila, Juhi, and Sanjay Suri, and he blends into that environment. And when that happens, he's a different guy.

This is a very mixed up but realistic plot about a guy who falls in love with a girl he runs into when he goes out for a good time with his buddy. But he has no idea just what a tangled mess he's stepping into (sorta like Bush in Iraq!) Soon he finds himself charged with attempted murder, caged with the worst scum of Mumbai, his life in tatters. I think this is also one of the SCARIEST movies I've seen because something like this could happen to any of us. It is really the grace of God that saves us, nothing else.

Juhi of course is pure gold. If its possible to be in love with a complete stranger you only see on the screen, them I'm in love with her. I know if I met her in real life, I'd be useless to the world because I'd be able to think of nothing but her.

What I really liked in this movie was the quiet dialogue with mood-setting music in the background. It is so rare in Indian movies, but I hardly wanted to breathe, the mood seemed so fragile.

Anyway, the critics who badmouth this movie are TOTALLY wrong. The fans who shunned it are TOTALLY wrong. This is a 9/10 if there ever was one.

But if your idea of a good movie is Krish or Rang De Basanti, don't see this. You won't like it.

Watched it for 'Tere Bin' song, acting is good but script is too weak.

An overwrought movie relying almost entirely upon an implausible plot. And before people go on celebrating this movie's "brave" darkness.. watch for the sequence of clichés: alcoholic, abusive husband who suspects wife of having affairs; intelligent and sincere wife who feels too bad to leave him (wtf?); love at first sight etc. etc. Nauseating.

The characters have little depth, and when they experience emotions it's either jealousy/guilt, or it's unyielding love/sheer cunning/unthinking evil.. usually in predictable sequences. What ridiculous emotional dichotomies.

Weak performances all around, and Juhi Chawla is completely wasted in this movie. So is Sanjay Suri. Both were so promising in Onir's far superior "My Brother Nikhil." Here they stumble around with weakly written characters. Urmila Matondkar is predictably annoying. Jimmy Shergill was kind of okay in his brief romance scenes with his first love interest in the movie, but quickly got much worse in the rest of the movie.