Tahaan (2008) movie image gallery :
Tahaan (2008) Movie Rating and Review :
Rating :
Acting – 9/10
Direction – 8/10
Screenplay – 8/10
Music – 8/10
Technique – 8/10
Review :
Life is brutal and beautiful
Tahaan is a fascinating study in contrasts. The backdrop is of death and destruction and the story is of a little boy called Tahaan (‘the merciful’). The tagline ‘A boy with a grenade’ underlines the dichotomy.
Santosh Sivan has delivered an ace with Tahaan. Cinematography is his forte and he has brought out the gloom of terror and the beauty of the terrain, achieving a ghastly-but-gorgeous setting that compels one to think.
The music, by Taufiq Qureshi, enhances the feel and builds up the ambience. Sivan also uses sound very well. Take the scene where Tahaan is blindfolded. The screen goes completely dark. It’s only through the sound and the dialogue that you make out he’s walking into the forest and... stepping on gobar!
The screenplay is so well woven that this apparently simple tale of a Kashmiri kid who loses his beloved donkey, Birbal, to the moneylender and decides to do all it takes to get him back, is used by Sivan to show a whole lot more. The looming presence of death, men who leave home and never come back, desolate houses of Kashmiri Pandits, curfews, gunfire, military raids, little children playing terrorists-and-military, and teenagers brainwashed to kill in the name of duty towards the Valley.
Sivan scores by not being consumed by all this but by using it to establish what he’s set out to do in the first place. And that tells the story of Tahaan.
It’s Tahaan’s journey from innocence to maturity which makes the film. After the death of his grandpa (Victor Banerjee) Tahaan is the man of the house. His mother Sarika has gone mute, possibly after his father went missing. Tahaan has an elder sister, Zoya (Sana Shaikh).
Moneylender Kuka Sa’ab (Rahul Khanna) taking advantage of the family’s predicament grabs Birbal the donkey and sells it to a trader, Subhan Daar (Anupam Kher). Kher ferries fruits and other goods across the mountain and is a man of different shades. He is compassionate and canny at the same time. Tahaan tags along, determined to get Birbal back. Sivan uses Kher the stingy businessman and his dimwit assistant Rahul Bose to inject some humour in this darkness. Here too, he is spot-on.
Just like with each and every characterisation. Victor in his small but endearing role of a grandpa is perfect. Sarika emotes with her face and eyes. Anupam is very good, as is Rahul Khanna. Rahul Bose is a pleasant surprise in a very different role. Even the enigmatic Ankush Dubey is arresting as the teen terrorist who leads Tahaan to believe that he can get Birbal back if he agrees to smuggle some weapons and toss a grenade at the military camp!
But it is Purav Bhandare as Tahaan who leaves you awestruck. The film wouldn’t have been possible without this little darling. The maturity with which he handles adult material is worth a watch, twice over. Especially when he stands at a critical crossroads of life in the face of death — a grenade in hand, the pin plucked, he spies his father on one side and his beloved donkey on the other. How will he save both?
The film does provide a glimmer of hope in the gloom. So you come away not only marvelling at the creator and his cast but also with a sense of hope.
Acting – 9/10
Direction – 8/10
Screenplay – 8/10
Music – 8/10
Technique – 8/10
Review :
Life is brutal and beautiful
Tahaan is a fascinating study in contrasts. The backdrop is of death and destruction and the story is of a little boy called Tahaan (‘the merciful’). The tagline ‘A boy with a grenade’ underlines the dichotomy.
Santosh Sivan has delivered an ace with Tahaan. Cinematography is his forte and he has brought out the gloom of terror and the beauty of the terrain, achieving a ghastly-but-gorgeous setting that compels one to think.
The music, by Taufiq Qureshi, enhances the feel and builds up the ambience. Sivan also uses sound very well. Take the scene where Tahaan is blindfolded. The screen goes completely dark. It’s only through the sound and the dialogue that you make out he’s walking into the forest and... stepping on gobar!
The screenplay is so well woven that this apparently simple tale of a Kashmiri kid who loses his beloved donkey, Birbal, to the moneylender and decides to do all it takes to get him back, is used by Sivan to show a whole lot more. The looming presence of death, men who leave home and never come back, desolate houses of Kashmiri Pandits, curfews, gunfire, military raids, little children playing terrorists-and-military, and teenagers brainwashed to kill in the name of duty towards the Valley.
Sivan scores by not being consumed by all this but by using it to establish what he’s set out to do in the first place. And that tells the story of Tahaan.
It’s Tahaan’s journey from innocence to maturity which makes the film. After the death of his grandpa (Victor Banerjee) Tahaan is the man of the house. His mother Sarika has gone mute, possibly after his father went missing. Tahaan has an elder sister, Zoya (Sana Shaikh).
Moneylender Kuka Sa’ab (Rahul Khanna) taking advantage of the family’s predicament grabs Birbal the donkey and sells it to a trader, Subhan Daar (Anupam Kher). Kher ferries fruits and other goods across the mountain and is a man of different shades. He is compassionate and canny at the same time. Tahaan tags along, determined to get Birbal back. Sivan uses Kher the stingy businessman and his dimwit assistant Rahul Bose to inject some humour in this darkness. Here too, he is spot-on.
Just like with each and every characterisation. Victor in his small but endearing role of a grandpa is perfect. Sarika emotes with her face and eyes. Anupam is very good, as is Rahul Khanna. Rahul Bose is a pleasant surprise in a very different role. Even the enigmatic Ankush Dubey is arresting as the teen terrorist who leads Tahaan to believe that he can get Birbal back if he agrees to smuggle some weapons and toss a grenade at the military camp!
But it is Purav Bhandare as Tahaan who leaves you awestruck. The film wouldn’t have been possible without this little darling. The maturity with which he handles adult material is worth a watch, twice over. Especially when he stands at a critical crossroads of life in the face of death — a grenade in hand, the pin plucked, he spies his father on one side and his beloved donkey on the other. How will he save both?
The film does provide a glimmer of hope in the gloom. So you come away not only marvelling at the creator and his cast but also with a sense of hope.
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