Road, loony
by: Amit Kumar Agarwal
Two questions that baffled me as I watched Road, Movie unfold in front of my eyes were:
Why would someone make a movie like Road, Movie?
Why would someone watch a movie like Road, Movie?
The answer to both the questions is same - for the love of cinema!
Cinema can be good or bad; entertaining or dull is another story - but there are filmmakers who just make films for their love to make films.
Dev Benegal falls in this category of filmmaker's - if only he had worked on the story!
A well made (good budget), badly executed (story, screenplay, dialogues, acting, editing) movie - the sub-plot of water-mafia was tackled in a much better form in Dev's last Split Wide Open. After more than a decade Dev comes up with Road, Movie - one wonder's why turn audience loony by making a film at all - as about 7 audiences in the audi ranted!
Road, Movie tells the story of Vishnu (Abhay); his disinterest in selling oil manufactured by his father makes him transport a truck-cinema to a sleepy town Samudrabad. What happens enroute forms the narrative of the story.
The protagonists' introduction to various characters - a young runaway (Mohammed Faizal), a wandering mechanic (Satish Kaushik), a gypsy woman (Tannishtha Chatterjee) and a water-mafia kingpin (Yashpal Sharma) - is so lifeless that the 85 minute movie seems like a never-ending yarn!
The writing is implausible - imagine a road-side kid talking about Starbucks!
If the producers thought Abhay Deol was a force to reckon with, post-Dev D; they will be rudely shocked! A critic said Abhay is a very limited actor, its just that he fit the Dev D character hand-in-glove; guess she was right for here Abhay doesn't seem the character Vishnu!
What rocks the movie:
Cinematography. The rustic barren land of Rajasthan is beautifully captured and probably might enthrall a few people in the west.
What chucks the movie:
Everything
VERDICT
Road, movie is neither for the masses nor for the classes.
Neither for the box-office, nor for the festival circuit or connoisseurs of art house cinema. It is made just for the sake of making a film and that alone is Road, movie's achievement!