Road, Movie Review

Imagine a clear landscape draped in light, the only comfortable blanket in sight being the one next to you and a view where the smallest speck of an anomaly can turn out to be far worse. Road, Movie is in its heart, a movie for anyone who loves the freedom and lack of inhibition of the open country road. Except here, the scene is shifted to a seemingly apocalyptic Rajasthan where people thirst for water and the tiniest resource is worth holding on to.

Abhay Deol plays Vishnu, a soft-spoken man who is, according to his own admission suffocating in the mediocre, monotonous world created by his father who is in the hair oil business. On the pretext of running an errand for an old client of his, a man who owns a travelling cinema, he decides to escape from his life and start a new one. On the way he picks up a kid with his own ambitions for social mobility and an old mechanic who essentially is there to keep the old truck from breaking down who dreams of seeing a nearby fair which he went to when he was a child, once again. What follows is a tale of escapades from bored policemen, to mechanical failures, to simple minded dacoits, to damsels in distress.

To keep it short, Road, Movie begins of as an aimless draw into the seemingly ethereal. To the casual viewer by the middle of the movie, the tone hasn't changed much. And the ending might just have veered a bit too much. However on deeper inspection and a small amount of brainstorming, the movie comes out as a radical story of self-discovery rather than a pastiche of small disconnected stories in order to bring forward a rather dull message of survival. The chief character begins as a man trying to run away and find the secret to manhood on his own terms. However through the people he meets: an destitute vagabond, a carefree and slightly deranged old man and a kind but vague young gypsy girl; he realizes that instead of finding his calling here, the better way would be to take knowledge from a man who knows what manhood is; his father. Essentially, he realizes that the same man who he ridiculed at the movie's beginning is far better to learn from than meeting the various hodge-podge of people one might stray upon the old, less-taken road.

To round it off, there's beautiful cinematography by Michel Amathieu of the open road with the sun making its presence felt and the dryness almost seeping into the viewer's veins. And there's Abhay Deol at his best, playing a secondary character in his own story. In spite of maverick performances by Mohammed Faizal as the destitute kid and Tannishtha Chatterjee as the gypsy girl, the movie is entirely overshadowed by the hulking presence of Satish Kaushik as the old mechanic. He plays the kind old man, the loveable idiot, the stowaway and the klutzy cause of all problems with such an aplomb and command that in spite of his many shortcomings, you forgive the character and truly feel sad at his outcome. In fact the only dissapointing facet of this movie was the rather campiness of many of its vital scenes such as the scene where Vishnu rescues himself and his companions from the dacoits. Also, going a little easy on the score would have helped.

Road, Movie is definitely worth watching at least once. Though release dates in the US are out of my reach to find, try renting a copy from the internet or live streaming the movie. It's worth the time and the bandwidth.

Verdict::::

Visuals: 8/10
Script : 7/10
Acting : 7/10
Pacing : 8/10
Impact: 8/10
Originality : 8/10

Overall : 77/100