There is certainly no harm or issue if a creative person gets a chance to direct a film due to his or her family linkage or business association ahead of many other deserving candidates in line. But if that remains the only qualification of the person getting the big opportunity then that surely raises many serious doubts and questions concerning the makers as well as the viewers spending their hard earned money and time watching the creation in the theater.
Having said that, I was still sincerely willing to watch director Divya Khosla Kumar’s latest venture ignoring her earlier mess called YAARIAN (which ironically did make some money as reported), assuming that a lot of essential lessons must have been learned in the path walked till now post the debut effort and her second film must be having some good signs of growth coming from a much more confident and mature woman director.
However it seems that the financial success of YAARIAN taught her an entirely different lesson and she decided to continue with the same amateurish vision both in the writing and execution displaying an uncaring attitude, resulting in a film that can easily be rated much lower than even YAARIAN (which at least had a youthful feel provided by the youngsters). In short, despite having an evergreen theme of an intense love-triangle, SANAM RE has no mature story progression right from the beginning and the film completely fails to take you onto any enjoyable romantic journey as promised. In fact such is the level of absurdity in its highly nonsensical and silly insertions post intermission that you feel like moving out of the theater more than once before it actually ends.
Sharing the key points, the director doesn’t introduces any lead girl till the first 30 minutes but shockingly decides to be on screen herself, not in any decent cameo, but as a typical item number girl or a hot dancer singing a brazen club song (daring indeed!). The actual heroines get visible post almost 40 minutes into the film but we still do not have any clue about the storyline or its basic theme. Further, an irritating boss wrongly quoting Shakespeare, reference of a supposedly funny-awful ‘Meditation Camp’ featuring comedian ‘Bharti’, a town with a never ending unusual snowfall, sequences shot on contrasting locations illogically, a highly absurd scene in the foreign jail and once again the same old plot of terminal illness used in the script towards the end simply forces you to ask that who has written all this crap and who has approved it.
If that is not enough, then in the cast we have a grandfather with an unlikeable make-up who is also the town’s future teller uninterestingly played by Rishi Kapoor, Pulkit Samrat with his (mostly visibly) six-packs casually playing a hero who doesn’t care what might be the outcome of this particular film, Yami Gautam who should strictly exclude SANAM RE from her resume forgetting the mistake made and Urvashi Rautela remaining a plastic beauty throughout even in her revealing scenes. Besides, the supporting cast isn’t able to make any noticeable impact with nothing substantial written for them in the bizarre script.
Music being the only big savior of the film, we have a melodious title song and few other good tracks too, with their melody also rightly used in the background score. Plus the cinematography constantly keeps on giving you something to watch on screen with an illogical but wide noticeable range. But praising differently, these kinds of breathtakingly beautiful frames truly deserved to be in a much better and quality film than SANAM RE.
Coming back to Divya Khosla Kumar, she gets everything a director wishes to have in his or her film unconditionally due to the project being a home production made by T-series. But she still doesn’t make any significant effort to give the viewers a worth watching film for their money spent quite strangely. The amateurish vision last seen in her YAARIAN remains right there in the film giving you a similar experience. But most importantly it was really disturbing to see how Yami Gautam gets portrayed on screen, who otherwise looks so gorgeous with a killer smile and incomparable, adorable looks in her TV and screen appearances. Expanding on the unexpected surprise, SANAM RE doesn’t have the Yami we all fondly remember having seen in VICKY DONOR and the only person responsible for this visual blunder has to be the director.
Continuing the honest address, Divya turns out to be a perfect location hunter in the film with stunning, picturesque locations of Laddakh, Himachal and abroad. She perfectly chooses the right kind of music required for a romantic film and gets hold of a decent cast too suiting the given roles. But this all also gels perfectly with the profile of a producer more than a director putting it bluntly. Moreover being in a position where she can easily make everything available for any kind of project as a producer, the lady should ideally become the SALMAN KHAN of the industry, giving chance to all talented directors looking for that one major break with a worth exploring script in hand.
In other words, as Salman has been helping new budding actors becoming their influential mentor in the recent past, Divya Khosla Kumar can easily become the same for many budding directors going for multi projects simultaneously instead of making one film a year as a director. That way she will surely be able to contribute much more as a creative personality to Hindi Cinema becoming the mentor of many new-age directors, earning huge love and respect in comparison to the name and fame earned from films like YAARIAN and SANAM RE.
Anyway that’s my personal opinion which might not reach the lady in question getting lost in the sea of reviews available on numerous websites. But ending on a thoughtful note, there was one question I had in mind while walking out of the theater after watching SANAM RE, and it was that why Tina Munim Ambani didn’t think of directing a film in all these years post her marriage?
May be because she is one of those artists who very well know who a DIRECTOR is and how thoughtful, responsible and creative he or she has to be for making an enjoyable film....!
Rating : 1 / 5 (including 0.5 for the music and 0.5 for the cinematography in particular.)
