As a device, it could have worked, if only the director had been able to draw out more from his cast and if the editor had shown greater skill.
Via Darjeeling
Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Sonali Kulkarni, Parvin Dabas, Vinay Pathak
Director: Arindam Nandy
Rating: **
An admitted tribute to Akira Kurasawa’s Rashomon, but a distant (and likely to be disowned) relative of the same structure, Via Darjeeling attempts to present differing interpretations of a story from various viewpoints.
As a device, it could have worked, if only the director had been able to draw out more from his cast and if the editor had shown greater skill.
A husband goes missing on the last day of a couple’s honeymoon in Darjeeling. The mystery of his disappearance remains unsolved.
Years later, a group of friends drinking and chatting on a rainy night in Calcutta are inexplicably fascinated by this story to the extent that each one of the foursome proceeds to suggest what they think might have happened that day. Rajat Kapoor, Simone Singh, Sandhya Mridul and Prroshant Narayannan play the friends, nudged towards this story by inspector Robin Bose (Vinay Pathak, expectedly good).
The scenes in the living room are laborious, besides Rajat Kapoor who appears quite natural, and Prroshant Narayannan, who injects energy into the proceedings, adding some nuances to the otherwise dull ones.
Also, the versions of the story, while reflecting the recounting individual’s state of mind, do not connect with the audience.
Why is this group so fascinated by this story? Do they know Ankur and Rimli? And if they don’t, how come they look the same in everyone’s imagination? So is this just storytelling on a rainy day? In other words, after an intriguing set up, where you wonder about newlyweds Ankur (Kay Kay Menon, predictable) and Rimli (Sonali Kulkarni, overdone and high-pitched) and Bonny, the mysterious man in the skull cap (Parvin Dabas, in a sketchy role, which barely tests his skills), you feel almost cheated to learn that it is a yarn, and knowing this, there is no desire to invest in the characters.
Menon, Kulkarni and Dabas have the greatest opportunity as actors as they must represent their characters as per each storyteller’s version.
For the most part they succeed, although by story number three, given the almost real-time pace of the film, the viewer is reaching fatigue levels.
And the visual clues peppered throughout (like the books News of a Kidnapping and How to Kill Your Husband being waved about), or posters on the walls, verge on the pretentious.
Via Darjeeling feels unduly long, even at 104 minutes.
A more experimental cutting pattern and the use of various narrative tools might have been a better route for this film. And to leave a film with an open-ending, everything that preceded it must baffle the logical mind and engage the audience enough to invest in the exercise of post-mortem.
uditaj@gmail.com
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