Talaash
Director: Reema Kagti
Year: 2012
Duration: 140 minutes
Music: Ram Sampath
Rating: 7.0
Aka - Talaash: The Answer Lies Within
Trans: Search
This twisting narrative about a police investigation
into what seems to be a fatal road accident at times feels like it is going
off-track and is meandering, but it is brought together wonderfully and surprisingly
well with the ending that resonates like a broken promise from your lover.
It hits you in an "oh fuck" kind of way. It has a stellar cast with three
big stars, a great supporting group of actors, great Mumbai location shooting
and a lot of talent behind the camera. It is produced and partially written
by Farhan Akhtar (director of Dil Chata Hai) along with his sister Zoya Akhtar
(director of Gully Boy and The Archies) and directed by Reema Kagti - one
of the ever-growing group of female directors. It is a fine film that creates
a solemn noirish mood, realistic flawed characters and keeps you wondering
where the film is going. What starts off as a straightforward investigation
adds layers of guilt, sadness and criminality as it goes along.
It begins with a car roaring down an empty
Mumbai street late at night and suddenly it swerves to the right and goes
into the ocean. A few people witnessed this. There is no real question here
of what happened. But the driver is dead and is a famous Bollywood actor,
so the police have to give it more than a cursory look - the family wants
answers - why was he alone, where had he been, how did he lose control. Inspector
Surjan is put in charge of the case - he is played by Aamir Khan - and the
further he digs into answering the questions the murkier it becomes. But
he has his own demons to deal with. His young son recently drowned in an
accident while he and his wife Roshni (Rani Mukerji) slept on the beach.
If's run through his brain like a buzz-saw. if we hadn't gone to the beach
that day, if I had not fallen asleep, if I had saved my son rather than the
other boy, if I had said no to his son, if I had gone with him. So many ifs.
It has torn him and his wife apart and she has found solace with a medium
who says she is in touch with her son.
The investigation takes the Inspector deep
into the heart of the Red-Light area of Mumbai. Prostitutes, pimps, addicts,
drug dealers and AID victims litter the streets and shanty rooms. Sex is
in the air but a flaccid one of lonely men and empty women. The girls work
on the streets advertising their availability or in establishments where
a phone call will get you company in 30-minutes. Some of the girls are young
and pretty - others well past their expiration date. All run by pimps or
Madams. Somehow the dead actor interacted with some of these people and questions
are posed but rarely answered. These people don't talk to cops unless they
are in a back room with a fist in their face.
With one exception. A street worker named
Rozy who has taken a liking to Surjan and senses his emptiness. His loneliness.
She promises to sooth him. He isn't interested in sex with her - but he likes
talking to her - in her special place and she gives him some of the answers
he needs. She seems to be everywhere and hears everything. Nobody notices
when a prostitute is listening. She is played by Kareena Kapoor and is terrific
as this sexual enigma. She knows this role well as she was brilliant as a
prostitute in Chemeli a few years before.
The film runs 140-minutes and has a few
songs that play over the film but no musical numbers - something that is
becoming much more common in Bollywood films. That makes the films more like
movies from everywhere else - good scripts, good production values, good
acting but they have sucked the uniqueness of Bollywood out that so many
of us love. That brought us to Bollywood in the first place.
