The most promising feature of the recent Hindi Cinema has been its choice of subjects ranging from fresh, innovative plots, bio-pics to incorporating recent happenings, social developments in the scripts, moving ahead from the clichéd routine stuff. Plus the technical advancement in visualization has certainly come a long way in the last two decades, in terms of VFX and execution of fantasy/disasters on screen like never before.
However, despite showcasing such positive development in the technique, the Hindi mainstream film industry and its flag bearers are still strangely and foolishly ignoring their writing department and depth in the characterizations, essentially required to express the essence of their otherwise well-chosen subjects. The projects are being made in a rushed manner stressing more upon the commercial elements or the opening weekend collections and the content/writing is not being given any serious attention at all visible in many of the recent projects made on interesting and potential plots.
Exactly same is the case with this week’s KEDARNATH too, which though has an ideal, realistic and highly relatable backdrop for a poignant love story but fails to deliver repeating the same old things as a completely dull and casually written, unmoving saga. Revealing its basic story progression, the first half simply talks about the sacred place, the ambience and the love blossoming between a Hindu-Muslim couple without offering any novel sequence. And the first noticeable punch comes in the 50th minute of its narration right before the intermission, clearly conveying the level of its so lazy writing taking the viewers for granted. The next 30 minutes bring in the predictable conflict between the families belonging to different religions and then the final 25-30 minutes are all about the scary tragedy faced by the valley as seen in the year 2013.
Remaining more interested in the glossy presentation of his lead characters and the VFX section of the film, director Abhishek Kapoor and his writer Kanika Dhillon simply keep on moving on a flat note without adding anything fresh into the script in the form of some engrossing, adorable sequences making you feel the love or chemistry between the young couple. And thus, never reach out to the audience as two impressive story tellers. Moreover their characterization is utterly confused with a small time girl managing to call several boys into her home at regular intervals with marriage proposals and then silently agreeing to the shameful ‘change of bride’ demand by the influential fiancé, in complete contrast to her otherwise outspoken and bold character.
In fact the writers add too many subplots in their script in order to make it more relevant and then do not care to develop any, including the regressive sibling dilemma, the class divide in such rural areas, cruel commercialization of the region ignoring the evident risks, the local government’s role in the strictly avoidable urbanization, the communal hatred, the saffronization of everything around and the still prevailing emotional pull among the people living together since ages.
Besides, the lead performances keep struggling to make a significant impact on the viewers with Sushant Singh Rajput continuing making ‘selfie like’ faces showcasing cool mannerisms completely mismatching with his given character of a local poor porter. On the other hand, Sara Ali Khan begins well with confidence, strongly reminding you of her mother’s debut performance of BETAAB, but then soon fizzles out with just an above average debut act mainly affected by the poor writing. The rest of the cast acts fine as required with nothing extra ordinary to mention in particular.
To be fair, KEDARNATH still scores in its technical department of cinematography, art-direction, sound, costumes, background score and to some extent music too. However that includes the final sequences being too dark and the soundtrack not having any melodious song to take back home as usual (which once used to be the key feature of our intense love stories).
So the technical excellence is right there in the beginning as well towards the end with some impressive VFX sequences of the devastating floods. But nothing works in the middle, neither as a love story nor a disaster movie revolving around a Godly place, smartly inspired from the tragedy of the famous TITANIC.
On the whole, KEDARNATH has nothing new to offer except some well-conceived visuals and an above average debut of a star-daughter that can easily be skipped in the costly multiplexes - to be later watched on the online portals soon for a fees already paid.
Rating : 2 / 5 (With the additional 0.5 for the confident debut of Sara Ali Khan, along with mentioning the fact that the girl appears to be much more graceful, intelligent and aware in her media interviews.)
