Anwar

The movie starts brilliantly, with excellent visuals giving us glimpses of colourful photographic images. Then after the opening credits, we see a young Anwar (Siddharth Koirala) travelling buy bus. He decides to stop at Dholpur and spends the night in a temple. In the morning he is awakened by voices. A minister makes an announcement about a terrorist hiding in the temple. Gradually villagers, journalists, police and even filmmakers get involved in the gathering crowd.

Jha doesn't tell his story chronologically and that works because it keeps the viewer engaged and to keep focus on different characters and their stories. 'Anwar' is mainly Anwar's story but we also see several more broken or breaking love stories e.g. the minister and his ex-mistress, master Pasha, the reporter Anita, the cop and his dying wife and of course Anwar and Mehru. Don't people do some of the most irrational things when they have just experienced a severe heartbreak? Either they want to get back at the person who destroyed the relationship (Anwar), win back the lover (Anwar), project their anger towards something (or someone) else (the minister), preoccupy themselves with something else to not think about it (Manisha's character), or take drastic measures to end the pain immediately (Vijay Raaz's character).

At the same time we also see how many of these people are getting involved with the crowd around the temple, each one there for their own benefit e.g. the paranoid journalist (Rajpal Yadav) who thinks Bin Ladin is in there or the minister who sees this as a chance to win more votes. At first I thought that the Rajpal Yadav character was ridiculous but after re-watching the film, it made a lot more sense. During such (potential) crisis situations, isn't everyone wondering who's behind it? I mean nowadays when one hears of a bomb blast anywhere, the first name that comes to mind of the common people is Al Qaeda. Yadav's paranoid character actually believes that Bin Laden's hiding in the temple and this story will make him big.

The item number may seem pointless. However, the whole shooting in the temple location makes a lot of sense. It's good publicity for the filmmaker to shoot his film at the place and time of crisis. The item number presents the ridicule of the idea.

Jha's direction is superb and throughout the film we see images that symbolize something. Jha is telling us something through each of these images. I'll come back to this later on. The performances are equally excellent. Siddharth Koirala delivers one of the finest performances of the year. Nauheed Cyrusi is brilliant and Hiten Tejwani is good too. Vijay Raaz is a knockout. The rest of the cast are all adequate. The songs and background scores flow beautifully with the screenplay.

As I mentioned earlier, 'Anwar' is full of symbols. For example: Why were all the love stories broken/incomplete? What was Jha trying to convey about love in today's world? Did Anwar see his love for Mehru as Krishna's love for Radha? In one of the earlier images we see a blue earring fall into water, in a later scene we see Udit take off that earring from Mehru's ear. It was Anwar who had bought that ring for her. Why was that boy wearing a tri-colour shirt of the Indian flag? There are several ways to interpret.

This is one of the movies I'd love to further analyze and discuss but I'll just stop here for now. I do recommend people to watch this beautiful thought-provoking work of art even though I don't think it will appeal to everyone. If it doesn't appeal on first glance, try and give it another chance. It does get better with subsequent viewing.

You watch a movie like Anwar and immediately you think to yourself: 'These are the sorts of movies India should be submitting to the Baftas and the Oscars', and Manish Jha delivers this incredible story note-perfectly. Anwar is, at heart, a love story and unfolds to reveal its subject in its broadest sense: (love of one's career, love - or lack of love - for one's country etc.) and also captures the true spectrum of love: the blissful awakenings, the pleasure, the joy and the rejections, refusals and slow breaking of hearts. Stunning visuals combine with a cast of characters so brilliantly conceived one could almost find them in the pages of a novel by Vikram Seth and along with deft performances, editing and dialogue, present one of the finest films to come out of Hindi cinema. Anwar (the film) is thought-provoking, questioning, unhappy, longing, haunting and fundamentally achieves what we need cinema (from time to time, at least) to be: the sort of medium that shakes us from our slumber with explosions and loud shouts, demanding us to listen, to have our ideas and beliefs challenged and queried. I can't recommend it highly enough.

This is my first movie review at IMDb. One of my friend suggested me to watch the movie. It was worth.

The story is really good one dealing with romance, reality and the absurd in it. All the characters are in love, or at least have some problems with love affairs and punished duly.

Anwar himself is punished severely since he looses his beloved, his friend and himself, life has at least no meaning to him except his love "mehru" who betrays him for real dreams while Anwar till the last moment lives in the world of his illusions.

The beggar, theatre artist Master Pasha, after loosing his Meera, awaits for another love break, Dipa who actually considers only as a beggar. The world has no time to pay for the emotions, all it want to buy is the product, what master pasha can do. Master Pasha stops begging and making designs temples for Meera/Dipa and went to perform hi final stage show.

All other characters in their own way or other are all facing the same thing.

The story can not be categorized as tragic one since it gives you a thought of considering not only your love for others, but also in the contradicting way.

I salute the story writer and the actor in the central roles. I rated 8.0 since it could have been better in other departments.

This isn't your typical Indian film when a girl and a boy fall in love through a series of songs, and the parents forbid it until during a teary dramatic speech they accept the fact they belong together, no. This story ventures out of the lives of certain people, of what would really happen not only the imagination of the producers or directors. I, myself am not a Bollywood fan because of its excess of love films, but this film was different, I'm sure anyone would love it. It makes you cry, smile, laugh, and surprised about the outcomes. Some of the actresses and actors who lost their popularity in the film businesses are sure to regain it after lots view this film. The music matched perfectly with this movie, it's melody was sweet and beautiful. I recommend everyone to see this!

I rejoiced for Manish Jha's bravado and intelligent approach to movie making and stepping away from Bollywood style tripe. Vijay Raaz's acting as the eternally sad Master Pasha was incredible-kudos-I admire your work and its authenticity and glad you haven't sold out to Bollywood. The scenes and allegories were beautifully and tastefully shot, the imagery unforgettable. Great camera work and I love the minimalist yet to the point approach- good editing. I was a little lost on Gopinath's role and confused by his end (I've always been a fan of Rajpal Yadav's acting) . Siddharth Koirala was very expressive, beautiful eyes (looks like the great malayalee actor mohanlal)he could be more emotive but performed rather well in his over obsessed with Mehru role. Thank you to all the cast and Manish Jha for producing such a profoundly intense story on the screen. I'm happy to see such intelligent work and gives me hope that not all Indian actors and directors are slaves to the Bollywood industry tripe that flows out in copious amounts. The music was incredible especially the theme song or at least Moula mere-Thank you! and congratulations on this nearly impeccable work.