Laaga Chunari Mein Daag: Old Wine, New Bottle
Pradeep Sarkar gives us another film with a lead female protagonist after Parineeta. Lagaa Chunari Mein Daag is the story of Badki, Rani Mukherji, a well-meaning woman who falls into the world’s oldest profession for the upliftment of her family. We have Badki and Chutki, Konkona Sensharma, two sisters who live with their aged parents, Anupam Kher and Jaya Bachchan, in Benaras. The family has seen better times, but now has nothing to fall back on except the ancestral haveli.
Rating: 1.5/5
So Badki, being the eldest takes it upon herself to provide for her family and heads to Bombay, the city of dreams and opportunity. With little education and no skills, she finds herself, soon mired in the dirty business of being a high society prostitute. This gives her enough money to support her family and enables Chutki to finish her MBA and also head to Mumbai in search of a job. Chutki finds a job and a love interest in the form of Kunal Kapoor.
Abhishek Bachchan in Laaga Chunari Mein Daag
Badki has to keep secrets from her sister, though a blackmailing cousin; Sushant Singh somehow gets wind of her disgraceful occupation. Badki battles demons on several fronts and even sacrifices her true love, Abhishek Bachchan. In a poignant moment, where Konkona clearly outshines Rani, the two sisters have an emotional confrontation with this bitter truth of their lives. They return to Benaras and Abhishek makes a sudden comeback into Badki’s life. However Chutki is determined to redeem her sister’s lost soul and helps her win back the respectability she deserves in the family. The movie ends on a happy note with love conquering all.
Lagaa Chunari Mein Daag has its fine moments. Konkona Sensharma is an excellent actress and puts some life in to this well-meaning, but depressing tale. Rani Mukherji does full justice to this author-backed role, giving you no reason to doubt her acting abilities. Abhishek Bachchan as Rani’s love interest flits in and out of the movie and has more of special appearance than a full-fledged role. Kunal Kapoor is charming while Jaya Bachchan seems to have replaced Rakhi as the weeping mother who looks to her daughters to redeem the family from misfortune and greedy relatives.
Konkana Sen Sharma in Laaga Chunari Mein Daag
Lagaa Chunari Mein Daag tells us the same old story and is predictable to an extent. It could have been better with a tighter script. The songs are quite nice, especially, Hum to Aise hain Bhaiya, and the fast-paced, Kachchi kaliyan hum na tode. Pradipda captures the beauty and soul of Benaras very well and the movie is well shot. The cinematography is excellent with some good dialogues. Lagaa is in a way a feminist film with cardboard male characters. It sometimes seems inspired by soap operas that presently dominate television and is a bit weepy. But definitely worth a watch for those women who love melodramas.
Rating: 1.5/5
© hamaraphotos.com
November 10th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
The cruel realities of the world’s oldest profession has been totally avoided and made it seem that this profession is not so bad really and is setting a wrong example for the xgen.