Talaash: Gripping but not fulfilling

Talaash: Gripping but not fulfilling

It engages you, commands your undivided attention, keeps you hooked to the promise of the unexpected and leaves you in gripping anticipation fairly long. Yet it leaves you tad disappointed in the end. The layers and layers of intriguing play of characters don’t add up to a finish that exudes a sense of completeness. That is what makes Talaash a good movie, not an exceptional one.

The performances are flawless. The actors melt into their characters with ease and suffuse them with quiet dignity and burning intensity. All stand out — Aamir as the police officer overburdened by guilt complex, Rani as the wife struggling with mental depression, Kareena as the glamourous prostitute and Nawazuddin Siddiqui as the scheming errand boy in the red light zone. The camera catches Mumbai’s nightlife in all its dark, gloomy, shady and cheerless splendour.

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Given the backdrop, the build-up and the haunting broodiness about itself, Talaash could have been an exhilirating cinematic experience. Unfortunately, it is not. With the basic premise of the plot so complex and the narration so taut, it is difficult put a finger on where it fails exactly to touch a chord, but somewhere it goes wrong. Maybe the murder suspense thriller could have done without the supernatural twist; maybe there are just too many ideas forced into one package; and maybe the heaviness of the proceedings do not lead up to a matching conclusion.

Suspense thrillers are supposed to throw clues, some random, some deliberate, but they should not be scatterred so far apart that the audience lose intrest in piecing them together. The trick is to tease the brain of the viewer and invite him to put of the jigsaw together. InTalaash, the clues come but it is not towards the end you realise what they add up to. The connection between the death of the child of Aamir’s character and the developments later is established too late into the plot. By then the viewer is a bit confused.

When the surprise — the dramatic twist — in the plot comes, it surprises but its does not shock. Because the build-up does not prepare the viewer for any shock, and at the point the viewer is too busy putting together several developments presented to him to be really worried about. The build-up and the climax were much better balanced in Vidya Balan-starrer Kahaani. It had a linear theme and did not have too many distractions. When the shock-effect arrived it was prefectly timed.

Thrillers manipulate the narration to build latent tension and keep it lingering. Talaash does that but does not sustain it as it should have. Perhaps the two strong strands of the movie — the lead character fighting his personal demons and the murder mystery — got entangled in the way they should not have. The dramatic tension builds, then subsides in repeating fashion. It disrupts the momentum. Kahaani did not have a similar problem. It was racy in its own way while Talaash is not.

At the experimental level, Talaash is a brave effort. Mainstream Bollywood movies try to keep it linear and uncomplicated. Directors avoid dealing with multiple strong subplots as might lead to a clutter. The Indian viewer is accustomed to story-telling that is easy on his brains — reason why science fiction movies are a non-starter in the country. Powered by brilliant performances, Talaash compels the viewer to think in non-conventional ways. It might not have been fully successful but the effort is admirable. The mood, the tone and the intensity are superb, where it lacks is tying the plot into the perfect package.

It is a good movie but it falls short of being exceptional.