Review: Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries)

More Scribblings Than Diary...

Mumbai is a fascinating beast, a boiling cauldron overflowing with the hopes, dreams, ambitions, and most importantly, stories of unknown millions. It is this pot that debutante director Kiran Rao dips her hands into to craft her own little love letter to the city - Dhobi Ghat. Unfortunately, she mostly ends up scalding herself.

Story: Set primarily amongst the bustling, crumbling bylanes of old Mumbai, Dhobi Ghat follows the intertwining stories of three of its enigmatic denizens. There's Munna (a very likable Prateik Babbar), a slum dweller with Bollywood ambitions who makes ends meet as a rat catcher and a washerman at the titular Dhobi Ghat (an impossibly packed corner of Mumbai famous for its rows upon rows of concrete wash pens). Then there's Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra, struggling admirably against some painfully stilted dialogue), a migrant from the rural north east struggling to come to terms with her new life, who spends her days recording videotaped messages for her brother back home. And finally, there's Arun (Aamir Khan, looking like he accidentally wandered onto the sets while out for a smoke), a painter who stumbles onto Yasmin's tapes when he rents her apartment, and finds himself increasingly besotted with this woman he has never met. And tying these characters' stories together is Shai (Monica Dogra, making the most of an ill-written part), a U.S. based investment banker on sabbatical in India whose role ultimately boils down to little more than a convenient plot device to keep the 'story' (and I use that term loosely) chugging along.

Review: Dhobi Ghat is not a bad idea. In fact, it is three incredibly fertile ideas that each probably deserve their own feature length film. However, much like that other misbegotten ode-to-my-city 'Dilli 6' (whose profound weirdness is unparalleled), Dhobi Ghat suffers from a very frustrating lack of focus. The film wants to be a gently paced, laidback rumination on Mumbai that offers casual glimpses into the lives of its inhabitants, but it also wants to pack in 3 hours worth of plot into its 1 hour 40 minute run-time. Combine these two forces together, and what you end up with is a film full of half-baked plot lines, painfully forced dialogue, sudden, unexplained contrivances that make no sense, and an abrupt conclusion that feels like the crew simply ran out of film and were too lazy to go fetch some more.

Of course even a film like this can work if it is populated with actors who can 'sell' the contrived characters and situations effectively. Even on that front though, the film is more miss than hit. Prateik Babbar brings a very likable innocence and charm to his role as the earnest, smitten Munna, but he is surrounded by some very weak support, be it Monica Dogra, who looks permanently bemused, regardless of the situation, or the normally dependable Aamir Khan, who rushes through his dialogue with the urgency of someone who really needs to pee. Khan doesn't even seem mildly interested in making an effort, a fact most evident in a painfully stilted scene between him and Dogra, where what should have been an awkward post one-night-stand conversation turns into an embarassingly drawn out display of just how much Khan is half-assing his way through the role.

Ultimately, Dhobi Ghat is more frustrating than it is bad, giving us slight glimpses of few very good ideas lost in the jostling cacophony of innumerable really mediocre ones. In that sense at least, it manages to mirror the city it purports to celebrate. But it is art for the sake of art, pretty pictures and empty philosophy that serves no purpose and carries no meaning, and if you fail to see the point (like I did), you will find yourself shuffling impatiently in your seat waiting for something interesting to happen.

Rating:

P.S.: I will concede, there are a few beautiful shots of the city in the film, and I do applaud the film-makers for not succumbing to the urge to make fun of mineral water swilling 'NRI types', the innumerable 'gays' that seem to dot every 'modern' desi flick, and other done-to-death stereotypes...