Phillauri: Ghost of a film
Cast: Anushka Sharma, Diljit Dosanjh, Suraj Sharma, Mehreen Pirzada
Rated: 6/10
It is a beautiful film with a lot of heart. It is hilarious when required and moving when in the flashback. It saddles two worlds — one 98-years-old when it was beneath good family girls to even consider writing poetry, and the other where the widowed granny, and the rest of the family, is a whiskey-guzzling song and dance family.
As producer, Anushka has literally done a ghost of a job. No really. The sets of pre-independence India are keenly stitched up, the shades are just right for a sleepy Punjabi village and the love story is crackling chemistry between an earthy Diljit Dosanjh and a deceptively docile Anushka Sharma.
But the film opens 98 years after both are dead and gone, almost. We see Anushka as a glitteringly beautiful ghost in gold and tissue, floating around confused in a Canada-returned rapper Punjabi munda’s bedroom. The interactions between her and themunda, aka Kanan, are funny but too short which leaves you wanting for more. Herein lies the movie’s first faultline. There is humour but not enough. The situation that Anushka stitches up had so much potential for gentle laughter but somehow the director limits it rather ridiculously.
What he concentrates on is the romance of yore between Anushka and Diljit. He does justice here. The story is both taut and meaningful and the ambience of conservative Punjab is captured with a lot of realism. The songs are heart-moving and the story weighs enough to keep you on your seat.
The back and forth is also a good idea but the present which is meant to be light is not good enough despite a clueless Kanan and his bimbo-ish but pristinely beautiful fiancée Pirzada. Laughter is needed here much more than the laughter that happens. On the whole though, Anushka is lovely, Dosanjh is real and happening but the film is somewhere between beauty and moment, a little here, little there event which just about reaches your heart.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, 26 March, 2017