Irrfan, Dulquer ace rickety ride
‘Karwaan’ makes for a riveting road trip story even with its many flaws, thanks to nuanced portrayals Review Don’t miss it!
Life’s like that. It takes some weird twists and turns to finally put you on the right road. Of course, the “right” is often the wrong for some of us.
In a sequence that would have been profoundly amusing if it were not so tragic, a beautiful lady (Amala Akinneni, if you must know) looks at two coffins and tells Dulquer Salmaan’s character, “The right one is your father”.
“So far,” sighs Salmaan, “the right one was the wrong one for me.” Well, ha ha to that. Excavating humour from the innards of mortality is never easy. Dulquer Salmaan, Mithila Palkar and Irrfan Khan in ‘Karwaan’.
Writer-director Akarsh Khurana attempts the near-impossible and comes up with a film that never offends, even when it poses some serious problems of pacing.
You know that the film
is looking for ways to keep the journey going when there are unnecessary detours on the way. And why not? Salmaan’s Avinash is a repressed, unhappy 10-5 geek who hates his bullying boss (Adhaar Khurana) and wants nothing more, nothing less, than to break out of his executive dungeon and... Well, just shoot pictures with an actual camera, not its digital doppelgangers.
Here, I must say Karwaan seems inspired by the Netflix film Kodachrome where the estranged father and son (played by Ed Harris and Jason Sudeikis) take off on a road trip with a nurse after the father is discovered to be terminally ill.
The father in Karwaan (played by the everdignified impassively formidable Akarsh) is dead when the film opens. He is also dead-set during his lifetime against his son’s chosen career as a photographer. In a flashback, we see the patriarch sneer, “Learn to play the dhol [percussion instrument] along with photography. You can offer yourself as a wedding package.”
The repressed photographer-son’s discussions on digital-versus-actual with the spunky Tanya (the sparkling Mithala Kodachrome.
Small world.
But Akash brings his own unique worldview to the trope-centric tale of estrangement and reconciliation. While Salmaan’s repressed executive and Mithila Palkar’s rebellious collegian were seen repeatedly onscreen in various avatars, Irrfan Khan’s Shaukat, a wheeler dealer who wears his bigotry and benignity on his sleeve with no apology and very little grace, is a unique entity.
Khan is the only actor in the world who can order a girl to cover her legs before she gets into his car, without looking like an Osama Bin Laden clone. He has a great deal of fun with his role even when the road trip goes abysmally off-track. At one point, the three protagonists gatecrash into a wedding and what follows is not at all amusing, although it is meant to be. Elsewhere, Khan’s Shaukat makes fun of a tourist couple in Hindi, not funny at all.
Speaking of music, the songs in this Karwaan, pop up like pop-outs in a children’s storybook. They just don’t fit.
The pace also lacks grace in the second half of the film. But, while Khan can make gracelessness look aesthetic, the film, alas, cannot pull off that feat.
The dialogues and situations too seem often too representational to fit into the authentic ambience that cinematographer Avinash Arun accentuates with such casual diligence. At one point during the journey, Tanya decides to get a pregnancy-test kit only so that Avinash can debate with her on the changing value system of a society that has gone from Kodak to Instagram in a click.
Karwaan has much that is wrong with it. But it also has plenty that pleases — a warmth and an empathy for the misfits that makes it a very endearing road trip, albeit with irrelevant deviations.