DIL BECHARA: A last review!

JAI DUGGAR

Hello! Toh kaise hain aap sab? Chaliye shuru kartey hain.....

The last time we will get to see Sushant on screen. This movie was always going to be difficult to watch and it was. But to review it, is so much more difficult. This is so much more than just a movie. With everything that has happened it has become so much bigger than that. So its very difficult to remain unbiased and completely fair to the product. And I don’t consider myself to be a snotty critic, I am just a movie buff that can’t keep his heart aside while watching a film. Because apna hai na, dil bechara. But I will try to talk about it as unbiased and as fair as I can. 

Dil bechara is the official adaptation of the book, The fault in our stars written by John Green. The movie is directed by Mukesh Chhabra. I haven’t read the book, nor have I watched its Hollywood adaptation. But because it became such a big cultural phenomena, I kinda knew the story and the plot, from the internet and all. This story is about Kizzie Basu whose fighting thyroid cancer and is kinda lost in the world. She meets this charming, full of life boy named Manny who brings much needed joy in her life. Manny also had bone cancer and is near a relapse. What follows is a heartful story of these two souls connecting and falling in love and providing the much needed sweetness in each other’s lives. Dil Becahra has a beautiful story that will pull hard on the strings of your heart. Its a pure and honest love story. Its magic is in its simplicity. Its a kind of love story that our film industry doesn’t make anymore. The journey of Kizzi and Manny will make your hearts full and overflowing with love and life. Then it will break them.

 The joyful moments they steal away from their difficult lives to bring smile and happiness for each other bring a long lasting smiles to our faces too. And their hard and tragic moment make us cry with them too. Its apt that the movie has 'Dil' in its title because this movie is pure heart. Sushant plays the ever smiling Manny who is too self indulgent and too full of life. He comes in as a pleasant but not so gentle breeze into the fading reality of Kizzi and revitalizes it. It was such a bitter sweet feeling everytime I saw his charming smile and the twinkle in his eyes. He played the role with full commitment and exuded happiness effortlessly with his performance. There were also lots of his scenes that make you emotional and not for the obvious reason. I am sure I would have felt almost the same way if he was around. But there is no denying that the pain stays with you for so much longer, now and the tears are so much more real. Sanjana Sanghi as Kizzi Basu is a revelation. This is the first time I am seeing her work and she was really good. It was so easy to connect with her character, her story and she walks straight into our hearts. She marched toe to toe with Sushant and gave an amazing debut performance. The chemistry between these two was mind blowing and will definitely make you fall in love with their story. The work done by the supporting cast is also impeccable specially Saswata Chatterjee and Swastika Mukherjee, who played Kizzi’s parents. 

Some of my favourite scenes of the movie included them. The movie is filled with these small, simple scenes that leave a big impact. Like there is a scene where Kizzie rides on the back of Manny’s bike for the first time. It was beautiful. And the scene where Manny and Kizzi's dad talk over a few beers. There is also this church scene towards the end of the movie that will definitely bring in the waterworks, so be ready. The cinematography and editing of the movie was really great, in my opinion, I was really impressed by the pristine way they shot it and it looked very different and so much better than we generally expect from a bollywood movie. So full points to Mukesh Chhabra for that. Another win for the movie is the apt and melodious music by A R Rahman. I won't say its one of Rahman’s best work but it went really well with the movie. The deep words in the songs and the touching background music added so much more depth to the scenes and the dialogues. As I said it was really difficult to remain unbiased while watching this movie and talk about the negatives but I must do it so here it is. 

I thought they could have made the ending a bit more stronger and impactful. I can’t really pin point it but it felt a bit incomplete to me. Also at the initial parts of the movie when Kizzi and Manny interact for the first time, I thought there were some dialogues that I were not really great and they were not landing. It made those scenes feel a bit awkward. One small irregulairity that I noticed was Manny's limp. So, Manny has a prosthetic leg in the movie because his leg was removed because of his bone cancer but in most of the scenes in the first half there was no visible limp in Manny's movement. And those scenes included a dance performance too. But later on in the movie we see him limping in a few scenes and it was like they forgot about it in earlier scenes. By the way, that dance sequence I was talking about, the title track. Its a one shot scene. There are no cuts and it was really awesome to see. Sushant was just phenomenal in that scene. This lad could do so many things right. 

Dil Bechara celebrates life and love but in this story death is not a fleeting thought of the future. Here, death is a guest sitting in your living room, pointing at its watch and telling you to hurry up while you try to rob a few more lively moments in your bedroom. The looming reality of death is what makes the moments lived by our adorable couple so much more heart felt for us. Its ironical that his last movie was so much about life and death. There is this one dialogue in the movie that goes like : we don’t choose when we are born or when we die, but we can choose how we live. This dialogue just holds so much more value now. Dil Bechara will make you cry. But it will also make you smile. A lot. It teaches us that our time here is finite and we should spend it more wisely doing things we wanna do. And most importantly it teaches us TO LOVE. Dil Bechara is a must watch. Just watch this movie and make people around you watch it. Its available on Disney plus hotstar and its free, so you don't even need a subscription for watching it. Its such a great move from Disney plus Hotstar. Just imagine how many subscriptions they could have got just because of this movie, because so many people would want to watch this. But they still kept it free, so its a thing worth applauding them for. I think everyone should watch this movie, at least once. And I am not saying it just for Sushant, I am saying it because it is a good movie. So, that's all for today.....

THANK YOU.