Reviewing a film may sound quite exciting to many friends as it's always easy to comment on someone else's hard work and creative output with a casual approach. But often with movies such as "A Distant Mirage" the job transforms into one of toughest, when one finds simply nothing to write about in the film and yet has to spend those 2 hours in the theater moving restlessly in the chair with the head down.
Having said that, I would like to talk about this movie by taking a wild guess on how the project may have been conceived by a group of friends on a pleasant weekend in any club situated somewhere in London. Imagine few wealthy North Indian NRIs sitting together over a drink and chatting about Indian movies made with a mixed language of English, Hindi and Punjabi. Now since they all are blessed with abundant resources to spend so they just decide on to make a similar kind of film on their own. In the next few days they manage to sign a NRI director, a famous NRI Punjabi music director of the past and few other important NRI creative persons who are essentially required to start off their film.
Now first of all, they have to decide on a subject for the script. But that's quite easy to select since they are only interested in making a movie revolving around North India, especially Punjab and its people residing in the west.
Before 2000, Punjabi movies were made majorly on only two subjects, one was the genre dealing with Devotional stories and the other was Love Stories written around the background of family rivalries. Later in the new century, the subjects shifted to the stories of NRIs, youth migrating to the foreign lands, marriages of beautiful girls with NRI boys, exploitation of young brides and the latest being the problem of Girl Foeticide.
So, getting influenced from few recent 'Hinglish' flicks given by some famous directors, our NRI producers easily select the overused subject of an Indian Girl married to a NRI boy which later gives rise to her marital rape and exploitation in the foreign land with no legal Visa. The same subject was recently (unsuccessfully) adapted by Deepa Mehta in VIDESH featuring Preeti Zinta and by Jag Mundhra in his PROVOKED featuring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
Ready with the script based on exactly the same kind of set up and sequences, the next step is to choose the star cast which again is done in just a few minutes roping in all the familiar, amateur but willing people living right in the neighborhood. Now what's left is the shooting which is finished off soon using a lower format and an easily available technical crew in the town. The locations being their own houses, factories and local regions around the South Hall which never looked so Local in any other movie shot in London.
After the shoot, the post production gets also completed in quite an irresponsible manner wherein the output is grainy, the background music is loud and the mixing is faulty where even the dialogues are not clear at several places. Yet, the final product is out which is nothing better than a B or C grade movie claiming to be an international project to be released in India as well as abroad.
Further, due to the solid backing of its NRI producers the film even gets released in Multiplexes of some major cities of India and is presented before the innocent viewers to ruin both their valuable time and money for simply nothing in return.
That's actually the case of "A Distant Mirage" which happens to be a completely childish project which somehow got released (I don't know How & Why?) this Friday and successfully tortured the few people sitting in the theater other than myself.
Based on an uninteresting and overused story plot, the film comprises a long list of negatives associated with it starting right from its first scene of a Punjabi wedding. Along with its aimless direction, poor production values, amateurish performances and uninspiring music (given by the veteran Channi Singh), the film clearly looks like a trial project planned by some wealthy NRI producers living in the west.
So, instead of wasting any more time and effort writing about this forgetful venture, I would only like to say that "Charity for a noble cause should have been a far better choice for all the producers of this film, if they had to spend it anyway"
In short, don't even look towards this amateurish mirage and just keep a good distance from it.
Ratings : 0.5 / 5 (And that's too only for its socially relevant theme.)
