Excerpt: Quite like life, it could have been better at some places. And quite like life, you can’t let this film go merely because of reservations about some moments. Strongly recommended.

Review: After making the critically acclaimed Marathi film, Dombivili Fast (which was remade in Tamil as Evano Oruvan, with R Madhavan in the lead), director Nishikant Kamat comes up with a lovely film set against the background of the (“7/11″) Mumbai bomb blasts. Though he doesn’t quite execute a couple of scenes as well as the nature of the film would have demanded, he accomplishes enough to get himself marked out as the director to watch out for. And maybe a little more than that.

Mumbai Meri Jaan is a story of individual lives getting affected simultaneously because of an incident that shakes the entire city – the bombing of Mumbai’s local trains. It is a story about a young, struggling computer hardware entrepreneur Suresh (Kay Kay Menon) reacting to and coming to terms with Muslims; about a mobile (moving around on cycle) coffee vendor Thomas (Irrfan Khan) trying to introduce his wife and daughter to the ‘luxury of window shopping at malls’ while trying to make the ends meet ; about a TV correspondent Rupali Joshi (Soha Ali Khan) who revels in getting ‘bytes’ from hapless citizens – till the tables turn horrifically on her; about a progressive and silently patriotic ‘techie’ Nikhil Agarwal (R Madhavan) who believes in the role of an individual in changing the face of the entire city and the team of constable Tukaram Patil (Paresh Rawal) & junior constable Sunil Kadam (Vijay Maurya) who, well, just about sum up the mood, scope and fate of those who join the police force.

The many characters of the film form the many stories of the film; which, in turn, form the character of Mumbai city.

There are many films, which can be served as reference points for the style of narrative. The most recent one can actually be Anurag Basu directed ‘Life In A Metro’ – although the stories there were more personal in nature. The biggest handle that such films have is that the narrative of such films can never get one-dimensional. And the biggest risk is that the film can come apart under the weight of disjoint and abrupt stories. Fortunately, by keeping the focus firmly on the larger subject (Mumbai), the film conquers the risk effortlessly. And by giving definite edges to all the characters, and their individual stories that contribute to the story of the city, the film never drags even for a moment.

Drag it does not; but it does let down at places. For example, scenes like the interaction between Soha Ali Khan and her beau (Samir Dharmadhikari) about the insensitivity of reporters at the time of calamities and the one in the conference room of a TV channel about getting TRPs out of the blast look woefully contrived and out-of-depth for a film of this nature. Admittedly, both of the aforementioned topics are fine and relevant to the story; but the execution lacks class in those scenes.

But that doesn’t take away anything from the writing (Yogesh Vinayak Joshi). He seamlessly weaves in parallel stories without ever making the viewer feel the need for them to converge. The biggest plus is the fact that both the characters and the story take each other along at all places – i.e. if you are able to separate one from the other! Adding to the subject are cinematography by Sanjay S. Jadhav and editing by Amit Pawar. Sanjay captures Mumbai like a person who’s traversed the by-lanes of the city and Amit edits as if he himself had written the story.

And yet, the biggest asset of the film is its actors. Average stories can easily hide average actors but good stories always remind the actors of their redundancy. Good stories tell their actors – “I’m so good that even if I had taken a lesser actor, I would still have come out good”. It is when good actors take up the challenge from good stories that we see the screen light up. And in Mumbai Meri Jaan, every actor takes up the story’s challenge and comes good.

Kay Kay Menon shines through and through the film. He electrifies the screen whenever he comes on it. Every gaze; every word and every silence of his is loaded with the soul of the character. He is one of India’s finest ever actors and needs to be tapped even better.

Irrfan Khan, as a coffee vendor from South India, and Paresh Rawal, as a soon-to-retire police constable give their recent ‘predictable’ styles a miss and come up with endearing performances. What makes Irrfan’s performance even remarkable is that he hardly gets to use dialogues to enhance his role. A few words here and a couple there is all he gets to speak – unless you count eyes, facial expressions and the body language. But it is Vijay Maurya who needs to be applauded for not only holding his own, but standing on equal footing with the veteran actors of the film. He looks and acts every bit like a police constable and is one of the most convincing characters of the film.

R Madhavan is a complete natural. He looks very secure with his role and enacts his part with great sincerity. Viewer can easily mistake Nikhil Agarwal to be the real Madhavan. Soha is best in emotional scenes.

“Fillum sirf dekhne ka, usme acting nahin karne ka”, says Paresh Rawal in the film to highlight that facet of our society – and us too – that harps on all things negative, but doesn’t want to contribute to a change for good. It would be sad on part of cinema enthusiasts and pretty lowly on part of self-congratulatory ones, who incessantly moan about the lack of ‘good films’, to not buy a ticket and watch this film on big screen. Mumbai Meri Jaan is not the best of cinema that you would have or will ever see, but it is pretty good cinema and should be encouraged.

THE INDIC POST says – Go, watch it.