Phillauri (2017) Review!!!

Synopsis – A man must marry a tree to ward off threats to his love-life, but the tree turns out to have more spirit than the man bargained for.

My Take – It’s not that Bollywood has never had a run down with the concept of ‘friendly ghosts’! To quickly remind everyone, range of actors from Salman Khan (Hello Brother), Shah Rukh Khan (Paheli), Shahid Kapoor (Vaah! Life Ho Toh Aisi), Boman Irani (U Me Aur Ghost), Naseeruddin Shah (Chamatkar), Jackie Shroff (Bhoot Uncle), Kareena Kapoor Khan (Talaash), Deepika Padukone (Om Shanti Om) and of course the most memorable of the lot, Amitabh Bachchan (Bhoothnath and Bhoothnath Returns) have played a likable spirit with mixed results. Here, Anushka Sharma, who has already carved a niche for herself in Bollywood as an actress, raised a bar by marking her debut as a producer with the highly acclaimed 2015 thriller NH10, hence all eyes were glued on her second home production, especially since the launch of its widely loved trailer which piqued the general curiosity regarding its material. Unfortunately, this is just another Bollywood flick which uses comedic undertone to pitch the same old story of two people falling in love and not making it together, but retold in a slightly different manner. Sure, the special effects are reasonably better than what we are used to in an average Hindi film that involves special effects. The story concept as brought out by the trailer is cute too. Alas, there is nothing more to go on. The film is all of those things it claimed to be – rustic, earthen, entertaining but it’s also equal measures of exhausting, horridly slow and sometimes too childish for liking. It is sad enough when you watch a feature length film and you don’t see a convincing plot, the film attempts two stories and neither has the strength of holding up by itself or to support the other. This is a film that tries to have it all, but falters in the process, debutante director Anshai Lal’s film seems overburdened with the expectation to deliver on all counts. A large enough canvas, romance in two eras, and a climax that’s meant to tie it all together.

The story follows a mid 20s Punjabi guy Kanan (Suraj Sharma), a generic rich guy, flying back from Canada, to marry his childhood sweetheart Anu (Mehreen Pirzada) in a big fat Punjabi wedding. Upon landing Kanan is informed by his religious in laws that he is a ‘manglik’, and without the right rituals, if he weds great misfortune will befall him and the bride. Much against his wishes he fulfills the family elders’ wishes by marrying a tree to overcome his foretold misfortune. Since the ghost of Shashi (Anushka Sharma) from a bygone era resides in that tree, Kanan ends up unknowingly becoming her groom. The result, the pretty spook is now stuck with him and with his commitment phobia going in over drive, combined with the fact that only he can see Shashi ends up creating confusion in his relationship with Anu as D-day inches towards them. Is Shashi real or is she a figment of Kanan’s weed-addled imagination? Who knows? What we do know is that while Shashi’s sepia-toned affair with the popular local singer Roop (Diljit Dosanjh) unfolds in Punjab’s Phillaur town, Kanan clears up his muddled head and figures out precisely what he wants from life. The first half is entirely invested in tempering the story with the right tones. The first time we see Kanan, he is having a nightmare about his impending marriage to his childhood sweetheart. You might wonder why? Director Anshai Lal and writer Anvita Dutt conveniently explain it to us in a line that he is still looking for himself, whether he finds himself or not, is never established till the last scene. There are stock characters like the cool grandmother who drinks at 9 am, reminding you of every other grandma in other film, but to no effect in this case. There is an unnecessary homosexuality suggestive funny scene which seems rather out of place. But what really plays a spoilsport here is the past cutting into the present abruptly. A haunting deja vu of Tim Burton‘s Corpse Bride, the intertwined stories shift in the most random ways holding you back from putting your heart into either of them. While the witty feel you get looking at the present day entry of a really old ghost makes you laugh, the unappealing over poetic back story isn’t that absorbing and thus the film feels like a half baked one which needed more depth. The present is an altogether more fun place than the past, Shashi and Roop Lal are barely convincing as star-crossed lovers despite being luminously shot in golden yellows and earthy browns. For all their squabbling, Kanan and Anu actually seem like a couple in love. On the face of it, the apparition in the film is a tool to take a comparative look at romance then and now. Yet, with its gentle allusions to India’s colonial history, social attitudes towards artists and women’s autonomy, the film becomes more than just that. It is, of course, a bemused swipe at regressive customs and those who follow them without conviction or understanding. It is a comment on how even now gifted women are often fronted by men with half their talent because ambition is deemed a dirty word for women. Most of all though, it is a reminder that the human lives lost in any tragedy are not mere statistics, but real people who died with goals yet unattained and dreams yet unfulfilled. All this takes a while to sink in though because Lal takes too long to get to the point. Too many Hindi films are lost to the curse of the second half and this film is no different, after the initial engaging, the post interval the portions are just too stretched out and become as pale as Shashi’s ghostly presence.

The back stories are flimsy and hurriedly done and the climax is a wretch, and frankly a tad too predictable for anyone remotely well acquainted with history or logic. Along similar lines, when the story doesn’t move, social messages, satire, strong women, etc just don’t seal the deal. A story has to grip with its content or its presentation for any of this to matter. As you watch scene after scene overstay their welcome, you ultimately realize that nothing interesting is really going to happen. By the time, the big reveal(s) come about, you have guessed them and even as you guess, you aren’t really enamored by any of it. The underwritten love stories never realize their full potential and the film treads down the familiar half-baked Bollywood path. What, however, stays consistently arresting is the film’s music which is every bit worth cherishing. The film tries to stand out from the generic love stories but marinates in the same mediocrity. There are many plot holes which will make you wonder and ignore them at the same time like when Anu’s grandmother shows them, her Vinyl collection and finds them a record from 1919, the same year the tragic massacre of Jallianwala Bagh happened, she singlehandedly remembers the incident as she herself has witnessed it, that is 98 years back so exactly how old is she, seriously? The film also calls for a major suspension of disbelief especially in the way the ghost story is resolved. Actually by the time this point is reached, so much of silliness has come to pass that the audience feels it is one more scene that needs to be tolerated. To be fair, the visual elements in the film are executed well, with the VFX on the ghost elements for Shashi looking picture perfect, and the Punjabi wedding grandeur brought to screen. The pre-Independence setting looks authentic enough as well, with rich dressing and rustic housing intact. The cast is largely good, with the film clearly belonging to Suraj Sharma (Life of Pi, Homeland, The Million Dollar Arm). Marking his Bollywood debut, Suraj Sharma is entertaining as Kanan, complete with the quirks and traits of a Canada-return-Punjabi-boy, the stereotypes doing him some good and also proves to be a deft physical comedian. Anushka Sharma’s acting prowess really makes its way to the screen in the pre-Independence portions, where her eyes and expressions do the talking, and her restrained performance becomes the backbone of those sequences, but for the rest of the film she is just ok. Diljit Dosanjh shines in his role in and as the titular character, looking the part of a singer in the village, with a Sufi air that makes the ladies swoon. His simplicity is what makes his character most believable, even in the over-the-top climax. Debutant Mehreen Pirzada doesn’t have much to do other than playing the love struck Punjabi girl to the hilt. On the whole, ‘Phillauri’ is a letdown in terms of writing and directorial execution despite some likable performances.