Via Darjeeling rating and review

Via Darjeeling (2008) Movie Rating and Review :

Rating :

Acting – 5/10
Story – 4/10
Direction – 3/10
Camera – 6/10
Music – 5/10

Review :

What is the because?

The title is the smartest thing about Via Darjeeling. Otherwise, the film takes you for a ride and makes you feel stupid for buying all that talk of a thrill in the hills.

The four different theories about one mysterious incident — which in itself is not so bad — are so pointless and confusing that you seriously wonder what was on the director’s mind while writing the (suspense) story.

Arindam Nandy is ambitious — he borrows from Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon narrative where three or more characters give their versions of an incident which they have witnessed. There can be more than one truth, Kurosawa had said. It’s not clear what Nandy wants to say. Or show. If the grand idea was to blur the boundaries of fact and fiction then the attempt, we are sorry to say, has fallen flat on its face.

Something happen the day honeymoon couple Kay Kay and Sonali is slated to leave Darjeeling — the husband vanishes into thin air while the wife is in the shower.

That sets the ball rolling for a parlour guessing game years later at Rajat Kapoor and Simone Singh’s place in Calcutta about what had gone wrong between the couple. The link between then and now is cop Vinay Pathak, a guest of Rajat and Simone, whose investigation into the Kay Kay-Sonali case is more comical than intriguing. It diffuses the tension rather than build on it. That’s the first step towards the slide.

Back to the present, the drawing room drama with five people, which had the potential to take on a life of its own, is reduced to a catfight on whose made-up story is the best! Each suggests a whiff of passion, betrayal, murder and deceit, but who comes closest to the fact is anybody’s guess.

Though peppered with several scene-by-scene reconstructions of the Kay Kay-Sonali chapter, the adda drags. Besides, the most dramatic moments — when Kay Kay makes a comeback only to disappear a second time, or when Sonali turns up at the party (where the people know her as someone else) and accidentally runs into Vinay — are left unexplored for inexplicable reasons.

Let’s face it. Steering an ensemble cast is not every director’s cup of tea. If let loose, the actors can run riot. Sonali goes over-the-top most of the time — during her outburst at ex-lover Parvin Dabas, while romancing her husband or agonising when he goes missing. She was also looking far from her best.

As the mystery man whose motives are not clear, Kay Kay is miles off the mark. But the ones you really pity are the talented Sandhya Mridul and Prroshant Narayyanan. All that Sandhya has to do is sprawl on a sofa and look bored while the others talk. Prroshant, sadly, is given some inane dialogues to deliver as a tipsy filmmaker.

The only bait is the arresting visuals, thanks to Abhik Mukhopadhyay’s camera — the opening car sequence, the indoor shots (on eye-catching sets designed by Indranil Ghosh) and several scenes around a Tibetan monastery score high marks. Prabuddha Banerjee’s music helps too.

N.B. Actually, Via Darjeeling was thanda; but the post-premiere party at Afraa and City Centre was hot...

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