Beginning with an honest confession, I haven’t seen such a wrongly promoted film, misguiding the viewers so boldly or absurdly in a long time. Expanding on it further, the early official teaser of ZUBAAN (uploaded in late 2015) talked about the search of music and showed us a Sikh character carrying his musical instrument on the back in fast intercuts. Next in its full length trailer (uploaded in January 2016) we again were served some visuals of a family drama stressing upon music with a sight of burning harmonium, a song saying ‘Music is my art’, the mention of its hero not stammering while singing, a text declaring the film as ‘the musical journey of the year’ and a Sikh character and his team dressed like a regional rock band singing a song on the top of a house in Punjab.
Now having seen the above promotional material (including the posters), its obvious for the viewers to assume the film to be something about a musical journey of a budding talented singer of Punjab, who actually stammers in his verbal conversation but becomes normal while singing on stage, offering a decent if not great soundtrack keeping in mind its basic theme of music.
But the moment you witness the whole film, you feel like a big fool as the two hours narration is not even concerned about these two aspects of music and stammering at all as suggested by its promos and title ZUBAAN. In fact you will be hugely surprised to know that the prominently promoted musical journey of its protagonist actually begins post the 110th minute of the film’s 118 minute duration and the rock song shown in its promos, in reality gets featured in the end credits, because it has nothing to do with the original script of the film revolving around the troubles and sour relationships of a millionaire’s family.
Keeping this misguiding promotion aside, yes ZUBAAN is not a trashy product and can even be rated as a promising debut project of its director Mozez Singh, but only in terms of visualization, cinematography and extraction of fine performances from the cast as required. However, if we talk about the writing, the script, its characterization, the romance, the music, the justification of its hero’s big religious transformation and more, ZUBAAN simply falls flat and remains unable to answer anything satisfactorily to say the least.
For instance, as per the title ZUBAAN, stammering was supposed to be its core issue but the script is not even interested in talking about it apart from a couple of scenes. There is no good reasoning given for the appearance of a free-spirited Sarah Jane Dias in the film and her weird birthday celebrations involving the drugs too. If truth be told, her sequences in particular give you a feeling as if they were all shot with a deliberate motive of making it too classy and artistic going much beyond the limit of anything sane (including the writer, location hunter, costume designer, set designer and cinematographer along with the director.)
In the conclusive part of the film, its hero talks with his mother in Punjabi and there are English subtitles shown on screen. Whereas in rest of the film both our hero and the rich millionaire keep talking in mixed broken lingo of Hindi-Punjabi even when they both are supposed to be from the same village of Punjab knowing Punjabi well as their mother language. Here had the director used the original Punjabi tone in these key sequences too along with the English subtitles, it would have surely given the film a much more authentic as well as artistic feel unarguably. But since we always have our one eye on the commercial market too while making such off-beat movies, the product suffers a lot and so does ZUBAAN.
Continuing with the flaws, the script has its hero getting severely beaten twice in the film but his deep bloody wounds heal so quickly in the very next scenes as if he has got a rare magical healing power blessed by The Almighty (here the director). Plus the sudden (read quick) cluttered explanations of his ‘unknown past’ added in the film’s final 30 minutes do not justify any of his chosen acts at all with conviction.
Moreover, if a film loudly promoted as ‘the musical journey of the year’, has got such an overdramatic and uninteresting soundtrack lacking the much required melody and universal appeal, then I really don’t have any words to comment upon the state (or understanding) of music by the makers quite frankly. To give you a clear idea, a song (given a respectable place in the film) saying, ‘Music is my art’ looks like as if you are watching a TV campaign selling some cheap products in the odd hours of the night featuring a forgotten star. Besides I also found a track ridiculously playing with a Punjabi word using it in an awful, deliberate Hindi tone as “Kyun Roosa Roosa Hai”, completely ruining the expression of “Rusna” (Naraaz Hona) as widely used in Punjabi.
Lastly coming to the most irresponsible, religious aspect of the film, it begins from a Gurdwara, focusing on the young Sikh child of an Amritdhari (baptized) Hazuri Ragi (official Shabad singer performing daily in a Gurdwara), and in these particular sequences of the childhood the kid is a proper Sikh wearing a patka singing ‘devotional hymns’ along his father in the Gurdwara premises. However later as he grows into a young man, his identity of a Sikh vanishes into the thin air and the director presents him as a tall, clean shaven boy with shorn hairs speaking in a Punjabi accent, who yet again gets back into the Sikh persona with a beard and Pagdi in the last 10 minutes of the film quite weirdly. But nowhere during the film its director (Mozez Singh!!!!) cares to explain the reason behind these sudden transformations of the character taking it as granted, clearly pointing towards the patchy, immature writing, understanding and execution.
Mentioning another ‘poorly incorporated’ insertion in the film, ZUBAAN features a big name in its lyricists of Janaab Surjit Paatter, who is a living legend of Punjabi literature and one of the most respected names of the present times in Punjab and Punjabis living all over the world. Personally I seriously wished, the film introduces this ‘not-to-be-missed’ blessed name to the younger generation through its impressive content and soundtrack. But sadly it is in no way capable of doing the same and we will need another impactful creation by a talented team to do the honours in the near future.
To sum it all, in case you are particularly looking for the next fine act of Vicky Kaushal post his much appreciated MASAAN then he doesn’t disappoint with a great support coming from both Manish Chaudhary and Meghna Malik as the tensed couple. But if you are expecting an enjoyable arty-musical as wrongly projected in its promos and posters, then ZUBAAN is nothing but a supremely confused venture that is neither artistic nor entertaining from any angle.
Rating : 1.5 / 5
