Parineeta

Overall an excellent movie. Parineeta means "The Married Woman" - a fact I discovered only during the movie. Kind of helped me appreciate it all the more. The story albeit simple is a pretty well-acclaimed classic but where the director Pradeep Sarkar scores is in its sensitive yet well-paced handling. Nowhere (except at the fag-end ... "Tod Shekhar Tod" ...) can you sense a trivialisation of issues (unlike Munnabhai MBBS, Vidhu Vinod Chopra's previous work); at the same time your patience is not tested by ultra-sentimental and hyper-emotional scenes.

I will not dwell too much on the story here, but just briefly describe what I appreciated the most. Lolita (Vidya Balan) is the central character - the married woman, the Parineeta. Her lifelong love is Shekhar (Saif) - a love while strong and pure, is unexpressed in words and almost taken for granted to the point where it is never acknowledged until the arrival of a third angle Girish (Sanjay Dutt). In one moment of realization, unknown to the rest of the word Shekhar makes Lolita his Parineeta. But things take a turn, Shekhar is convinced that Lolita has given in to circumstances (which I wont describe here) and decided to wed Girish. He condemns her and decides to move on with life and get married. On the day of his wedding Girish arrives to finally let him know that Lolita had in fact refused to marry him(Girish) because she has already accepted Shekhar as her husband. What happens next is obvious (even trivial). But herein lies the essence of the story.

The strengths of the movie are many, primarily the direction - the portrayal of the 1950s Kolkata is immaculate. While the obvious indicators are minimal - the Victoria Memorial, the Hooghly Bridge and the Goddess Durga make only momentary appearances; it is in the other minute details - the characterization and the picturisation that the director has been able to bring out the true spirit of Kolkata - a tribute to him and the entire cast.

The songs while stopping short of being great are very very good. "Piyu bole" is melodious and hummable while "Kaisi Paheli Zindagani" is truly enjoyable - Rekha is amazing.

Finally, the starcast. Saif delivers another extraordinary performance. While I believe his role in Hum Tum though good was not worth a National Award there is no doubt that Saif's star is on the rise and since 2001 he has been the biggest hit in Bollywood consistently. He portrays the rich, young Bengali babu perfectly but the movie in the truest sense belongs to the Parineeta - the beautiful and hugely talented Vidya Balan. She has literally walked into a very demanding role with utmost ease. Nowhere do you find her making an effort - she looks most natural. Sanjay Dutt is good only in parts and probably looks a tad too old for the role. The support cast is excellent.

In the end, a comparison with Devdas is inevitable - both being Sarat Chandra's novels. Parineeta in my view scores hands down over Sanjay Leela Bhansali's magnum opus. While the main reason is that Parineeta is simply a much better and positive story, the relatively light-weight starcast has also been a plus-factor. Devdas it seemed was made to showcase Aishwarya, Madhuri and Shahrukh and was resultantly much too elaborate even gaudy. In Parineeta the actors fit into the characters so smoothly to result into an almost perfectly underplayed product.