Masaan: Death is hope for Life
‘Masaan’ means
cremation ground. Masaan is about love, unpredictable events, deaths and ‘Sangam’.
Director Neeraj Ghaywan has woven all these elements in the ‘hope’ fabric. All
the events in this movie seem to end everything for the characters, but life,
like ‘the river Ganges’ shown in the movie, has to flow. And what makes it flow
is the hope. Neeraj Ghaywan, an alumni of Anurag Kashyap, has all the qualities
of a good narrator, and not the characters but his narration is the actual ‘star’
of ‘Masaan’.
‘Masaan’ starts
with a girl Devi getting caught in the act with her two days old boyfriend in a
police raid at the lodge, and her father, who works on Banaras Ghats as a
Pandit, has to pay Rs 3 Lacs as blackmailing amount. There is another story
running parallel to the story of ‘Devi’. That is story of Deepak, a boy from a
lower-caste Dome community that is, according to mythology, abide to do only
cremation work, who falls in love with a higher caste girl. When his love and
confidence to get succeeded in love and marriage is about to bloom, unwanted
incidences shatter him. What happens next?
There is nothing
called as the main plot, main theme, and main actors. That is the skill of a
good director. There are many sub-plots, like the one of Devi’s father betting
on his own 10 year old servant’s under-water swimming skills and then self-realization,
the other of character who falls in love with Devi during her service (job),
etc.
This movie is
just like one of its superb songs: Tu kisi rail is guzarti hai, main kisi pull
sa thartharaata hoom. Movie goes on on the screen like a railway and we, the
audience, every now and then, shake, sometimes out of fear, and sometimes out
of misery. The blooming small-town love between Deepak and Shaalu, the way he
proposes her with balloons, their date, and the explosion of Deepak in front of
Shaalu about his lower-caste, and Shaalu’s acceptance and showing hope to him, …
yes everything makes you fall in love with such Romance. In an era when
everyone is so habitual to unrealistic Shah Rukh Khan type Romance, the romance
between Shaalu and Deepak make come back to reality.
It is not a Bollywood
movie, so don’t expect any masala. It is new age world cinema, so expect
everything different and at the same time realistic from this. The songs ‘Tu kisi
rail si’ and ‘Mann Kasturi’ are meaningful enough to make you understand the
movie in deeper aspect. Cinematographer Avinash Arun Dhaware has captured the
city of Banaras and its Ghaats like never before. Banaras has never been so
gothic, so scary on the big screen. Performance of Vicky as Deepak (the most
strongest character), Richa Chaddha as Devi (the other most strongest
character), Sanjay Mishra as Devi’s father and almost everyone on the screen is
realistic. The river Ganges has an important role to play in it. It symbolizes
life, death and hope.
The movie ends
with two protagonist sailing a boat to explore ‘Sangam’, the place where two
rivers meet. The two parallel stories of Deepak and Devi meets at Sangam. Watch
it to make yourself watch many more such films.
