Namesake woes

Manorama Six Feet Under
Cast: Abhay Deol, Gul Panag, Raima Sen, Sarika
Director: Navdeep Singh
Rating: ***

What on earth made first time filmmaker Navdeep Singh call his intricately constructed murder mystery ‘Manorama Six Feet Under’? Not only is it not representative of the film but it is also most unattractive and hardly guaranteed to bring in the droves.

This will be a great pity because Manorama is one of the more intelligently written films of its genre and it doesn’t take the audience for dim-witted imbeciles. It’s a well set up story where nothing and no one is quite what they seem, where there is illusion in the middle of ordinariness and where a regular person can suddenly find himself mired in a convoluted scenario of deceit, avarice and menace.

Set in the backwaters of Rajasthan and shot in representative gritty settings (cinematography by Arvind Kannabiran is appropriate) it is the story of a junior engineer Satyaveer Randhawa (Abhay Deol) who has a penchant for writing. His maiden novel Manorama, a detective story, comes a cropper but gives him some fame in his place of posting.

When he is asked to play amateur detective by an MLA’s wife, Manorama (Sarika), who wants photographic proof that her husband is cheating on her, he jumps at the idea despite opposition by his wife Nimmi (Gul Panag). When Manorama dies and a verdict of suicide is brought about, his suspicions are aroused. One thing leads to another, he is roughed up, and soon he is at the vortex of a complicated scam where he can never be sure whom he should trust.

Other than the mystery, Manorama depicts interestingly the realistic relationships between Satyaveer and Nimmi and him and Brijmohan (Vinay Pathak), Nimmi’s cop brother. Unlike in most mainstream films where everything falls into place for the hero, with co-incidence playing the main culprit, here Satyaveer is often befuddled with only his intelligence to guide him.

Abhay Deol, an earnest and conscientious actor always, is first rate. He is supported excellently by Gul Panag and Vinay Pathak. As a first time effort, it is a credible one from Navdeep Singh.

For a murder mystery Manorama is too long and the pacing too slow. Though it has several twists and turns, these happen at long gaps and there is little of the tautness and edge-of-the-seat quality needed for a whodunit.