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| Director
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Prawaal Raman |
| Starring
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Tusshar Kapoor, Antra Mali,
Raman |
| Gayab
movie Photo gallery : |
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| Gayab
movie Plot : |
Once
in a while almost everybody fantasizes about
becoming invisible. And if a man, who has
been rejected by everybody as a flunky and
who has been subjugated in life, becomes
invisible, it is quite natural that he wouldn’t
do anything nice and straight.
Director
Prawaal Raman’s Gayab tells the story
of such a man. The protagonist of the movie
is a young man named Vishnu Prasad (Tushar
Kapoor).
Vishnu is
a man of a mediocre personality and has
ended up as a failure in life. He is very
common, very inconspicuous and low on self-confidence.
He doesn’t stand out in a crowd and
there is nothing extraordinary about him.
His little
world consists of a nagging mom (Rasika
Joshi) and a timid dad (Raghuvir Yadav).
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You
know the director is in serious trouble. After a point
you wonder why on earth this film with its gawky special
effects was made in the first place!
There is an effort in
every Ram Gopal Varma film to try something new, to
push the limits. But in "Gayab", one wonders
what he is trying to achieve.
The basic premise of
an inconspicuous common man (played by Tusshar Kapoor)
who gets his wish of vanishing into thin air is promising
-- though for home-viewing purposes. It allows the maltreated
protagonist a certain lascivious leeway into places
where civilised society does not allow us to enter.
Hence, our mousy hero
Vishnu Prasad is suddenly and violently ubiquitous.
In a prolonged celebration of secluded erotica, he barges
into his dream-girl's hi-tech bedroom (some classy art
décor by Jeena Shetty and Rashid Rangrez) as
she is bathing.
She is on an overdrive
with video games, and yet has the audacity to be shocked
when her boyfriend Sameer (Ramman Trikha) confesses
he once, just once, tried drugs.
A strange dichotomy
runs through this tale of wish fulfilment. The characters
are clean, uncomplicated, simple people caught in a
bizarre situation that fails to energise the plot or
the audience.
Though some of the early
scenes (like when the still-visible hero is slapped
by the heroine's boyfriend at a café) have the
power to touch you, the touch does not continue with
the film. The narrative grows progressively powerless
after Vishnu acquires supernatural powers.
To director Prawaal
Raman's credit, he does not overdo the emotions. And
except for the protagonist's mother, all the characters
behave 'normally', given the abnormal scenario of a
hero whom no one can see -- except the audience.
Hence, while the audience
is watching (and the characters are not), Vishnu gets
saucy and bold. Many of his misdemeanours of invisibility
involve yanking off his tormentor's trousers or tripping
them over.
Anil Kapoor was invisible
in "Mr India". But he never really got down
to yanking off anything!
Prawaal Raman's invisible
man is more like a mischievous kid. His 'lost-in-space'
pranks amuse for a while. But then he begins to get
seriously nasty, unleashing a desperate havoc on the
city, which is totally at odds with the sweet-natured
character.
Starting off as a feel
good fable on being invisible, "Gayab" gets
lost in a tale of an obsessive lover-boy who must get
the girl at any cost. Midway, when Vishnu decides to
rob a bank, you know he has lost the plot completely.
And so has the director.
Yet, if "Gayab"
is more bearable than it would seem, it is because the
film is affectionately mounted. Piatro Zuercher's cinematography
is like a bunch of ripe mangoes ready to be plucked!
The musical numbers by Amar Mohile and Ajay Atul are
interesting but too taken up with the titillating task
of showing off Antara Mali's curves.
Her manic performance
offsets Tusshar's cool discomfort rather well. So far
busy trying to play the college dude, Tusshar finally
finds his metier as the uncommonly common man. He is
not scared of dropping his defences to look as vulnerable
as a wet cat left to fend for itself in a dark alley.
While the lovely Natasha
is wasted as Mali's mom, Ramman Trikha's beefy-boyfriend
act is surprisingly free from malice. Unlike other portrayals
of the 'other man', he plays a regular guy who gets
pushed around.
Raghuvir Yadav fails
to strike poignant notes as the bereft father (for no
fault of his -- no actor can look convincing trying
to embrace a man who is not there, unless that actor
happens to be Sridevi in "Mr India").
But Rasika Joshi, as
Yadav's 'bitter-half' is so cartoon-ish in her cantankerous
role that one wonders if her uni-dimensional wretchedness
is supposed to lampoon middleclass anxieties.
In fact, cartoon images
are ratified in freeze-frames where Vishnu and the other
characters turn into cartoon-strip sketches. So after
"Hum Tum", we have another film that makes
no bones about its brittle intentions!
"Gayab"
is essentially a one-line tele-film stretched to a full
feature. Though it contains a few warm and wicked moments,
it finally gets mired in a manic maelstrom of climactic
chases and other claptraps of popular cinema.
Courtesy
: Glamsham.com
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