Tahaan: Movie Review
In times when most movies make an ass of themselves, Tahaan comes as an endearing experience.
By Gaurav Malani, INDIATIMES MOVIES |
Director: Santosh Sivan
Cast: Purav Bhandare, Anupam Kher, Sarika, Rahul Bose
Rating: ***
Director Santosh Sivan seeks inspiration from two of his best cinematic attempts Halo and The Terrorist and blends their spirit to conceive Tahaan, an innocent fairytale account in a factual setting. As the film proclaims, it has fictitious characters involved in non-fictitious incidents.
Tahaan (Purav Bhandare) is an eight-year-old lad who lives in the peaceful paddocks of Kashmir with his mother (Sarika) and sister Zoya (Sana Shaikh). His father has been missing since three years and Tahaan's only close friend is a donkey named Birbal.
The family has to trade off Birbal to the local moneylender against repayment of a pending loan. The moneylender in turn sells Birbal to a merchant Subhan Darr (Anupam Kher) who wants to gift the donkey to his nephew. Tahaan follows Darr to his town with hopes of getting Birbal back. But things aren't as easy as they seem to be.
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Amidst all this, Tahaan is embroiled in a terrorist conspiracy alongside the false pretext of getting his donkey back. How does the terror campaign influence Tahaan and does he succeed in getting Birbal back forms the premise of the story.Tahaan's desperate drive to get back his pet friend is clearly derived from Sivan's previous children film Halo that had a small girl in frantic search of her puppy pal across the city. And like in Halo or for that matter his other films like Malli and Navarasa, Sivan shows a remarkable flair for building a na��ve narrative around the child protagonist. Tahaan's vulnerable exposure towards terrorism is well tapped while he is still ignorant of his involvements.
The screenplay jointly penned by Santosh Sivan along with Ritesh Menon and Paul Hardart has a legendary charm and the fairytale end that it opts for leaves a smile on your face. The writing seamlessly gets into the children psyche in one of the scenes that shows the kids playing and posing as militants. Another winning sequence revives the hare-and-tortoise fable as the donkey wins a race against a mule.
Primarily a cinematographer, it's needless to say that Sivan's camerawork is outstanding as he captures the beauty of Kashmir valley as never seen before. Moreover his camera moves with the story and doesn't wander to artistically document the magnificence of the country. While setting the story in the snow-capped serenity of Kashmir, the film by default gets an appealing ambiance and the terrorism backdrop simultaneously. Taufiq Qureshi comes up with a spellbinding score having a countryside flavour.
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On the downside, the film runs on a rather sluggish pace. It also unnecessarily makes reference of a Kashmiri Pandit in hideout with no relevance to the plot. Rahul Khanna is completely wasted as almost a junior artist while Victor Bannerjee's character is too short-lived. Rahul Bose's character is almost caricaturized. It's Anupam Kher and Sarika who come up with compelling acts. Certainly the director extracts a natural and notable act from child actor Purav Bhandare along with his donkey companion. Together, the boy and the beast can give acting lessons to several adult actors of Bollywood.
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In times when most movies make an ass of themselves, Tahaan comes as an endearing experience. While weaving an adorable anecdote around a donkey, this one abides by the Hindi adage 'waqt aane par gadhe ko bhi baap banana padta hai'.Start a SIP with as low as ₹500 with ET Money App!
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