Mausam in Blunderland

Had it not been for the flaws in its technical aspects, Mausam, despite its weak storyline, wouldn’t have been so bad a movie.

Indian Cinema, right from the pre independence era, has churned out an amazingly large number of movies-movies that have been watched and admired by the entire globe. In fact the film Industry in Mumbai (or Bollywood as it is popularly known) is one of the most important factors that make Mumbai what it is on the global scale.

It was way back in 1913 that the first full-length motion picture titled Raja Harishchandra was introduced in India by the noted Marathi scholar Dadasaheb Phalke. And since then the Indian Cinema, as the cliché’ goes, has never looked back; churning out one movie after another, and adapting efficiently to the technological innovations in Film making. Today, therefore, there’s no doubt that the Indian Celluloid has indeed come a long way. This is indeed evident from the fact that as a movie goer, you never quite take into account the technical aspects of the movie, important though they are, because they are so perfect and flawless that you usually take them for granted.

And, therefore, the moment you come across a movie with technical imperfections, you actually realize the importance of those who toil hard behind the scenes in making the movie a grand success. I had this enlightenment the moment I watched the Shahid Kapoor-Sonam Kapoor starrer Mausam. An admirer of Pankaj Kapoor (and Shahid) that I am, I expected Mausam to be a different movie devoid of the run-of-the-mill stuff that we get to watch in most of the love stories. As a result, even though I am not the greatest of the movie buffs around, I went to watch the movie on the 2^nd day of its release.

About the movie

Forewarned is forearmed: It’s not a critical analysis per se; it’s just something I, as an admirer of Indian Cinema, took notice of after watching the movie.

The movie that begins on a promising note falters its way to an agonizing end, much to the delight of the movie watchers though, who are exasperatingly waiting for the movie to end. It’s not that the movie is too long (the movie has a running time much shorter than most other bollywood movies); it’s just that after about 90 minutes or so, you feel that the ordeal of sitting through this movie should come to an end. The reason: the movie gets most of its technical aspects wrong throughout most of its length.

There’s a sense of discontinuity in some scenes, whereas some are abruptly followed by another completely unrelated sequence. Besides, the characters in the movie keep shifting their base within India, out of India, back to India, again out of India...and phew it just keeps happening. The end result-it is confusion galore for the screenplay team, the editing team and the director himself, who end up passing on the confusion to the viewers as well.

Shaheed and Sonam, too, appear uncomfortable in quite a few sequences, mumbling something just for the heck of it, which leaves you wondering how the team allowed such loose ends to remain during its release. There’s no doubt, therefore, that had it not been for the flaws in its technical aspects, Mausam, despite its weak storyline (another chink in its armour), wouldn’t have been so bad a movie.

One good technical aspect about the movie, however, is Binod Pradhan’s cinematography that captures the beautiful Punjab landscape, the picturesque Scottish surroundings and the breathtaking snow-capped mountains of Switzerland with great ease.

P.S: ………..and it’s high time that Sonam (and Deepika and Katrina) learnt a few acting skills!!