MOVIE REVIEW : DASVIDANIYA

DASVIDANIYA : Go, Live your Life !

The first step in the spiritual process is to understand death, look at it as a fact of life and the only certainty in life. With this understanding, you then look at life in a completely different paradigm. It can completely change your perspective of how you are living and how insignificant things are making you miserable. And at the same time, how seemingly simple things can bring joy in your life and make you actually live your life.

Dasvidaniya takes this concept as the basic premise of its theme. Amar Koul (Vinay Pathak) is the main protagonist of the movie, who is an eternal looser personified. His life is completely dry, colorless, uninspiring and without anything actually happening. He is 37 and still single, since he could never confess his love to the girl with whom he grew up. He is a looser at work being constantly harassed by his boss. He doesn’t have any friend and family. The only family he has is his mother, who seemingly is more interested in Saas Bahu TV Serials than anything else in life. He has a brother, with whom he has not spoken since last seven years. The only exciting thing for him to do, is to make his daily “Things to do” list, which contains the daily mundane chores, like repairing the geyser, paying insurance bills etc etc.

In the middle of this unexciting life, he discovers that he is in the terminal stage of his stomach cancer and the doctor gives him only three months more to live. Once this revelation sinks in him, he starts making an insight into his life or the lack of it and does some self talk to reflect how he actually has stopped living many years ago. That is when he makes his final things to do list. “The things to do before I die.” At this point, we all can actually relate to this “things to do list”, as most of us will have the similar list and similar desires … to get the things that we want, car/house etc, to have a job we love, to be popular, to get the love of our life, to have family and friends around us. He makes a list of ten such things. The things which normally would have been impossible for him to do or achieve, had he continued to live the way he was living. However in the face of death, he manages to achieve all of this in just three months.

Dasvidaniya, carries this seemingly simple story line with honesty and sincerity.
The story by Arshad Sayed and screenplay is breezy and does not let the movie to lag or slow down at all. The characterization is authentic and look like coming directly from the real life.

The performances from the team of Dasvidaniya, which is now a popular gang after movies like “Beja Fry” and “Mithya” is simply too good. Vinay Pathak continues his simpleton character from Beja Fry and adds a pinch of sensitivity to it, making it lovable. Rajat Kapor as Vinay’s friend and Gaurav Gera as Vinay’s brother, both have played this role with finesse and ease. Neha Dupiya seems to have a new parallel cinema career going on, giving one more realistic performance after Mithya. Saurabh Shukla, playing Vinay’s boss, plays the typical, “we hate you boss” personified!
However Sarita Joshi, as Vinya’s mother stands out in her performance. Sarita is a very renowned actor from marathi theater. Her performance demonstrates the acting capability of theater artists. She has played her role with great authenticity and ease.
Not to be left out of the gang, Ranvir Shorey has also a small cameo in the movie. However I don’t think the role did justice to Ranvir’s capabilities.

The music and the background scores of Dasvidaniya is also one of its high points. We see Kailash Kher playing the role of a lyricist and music director along with the lead singer. He has written very simple but pleasing lyrics and given some soothing music, which is very atypical of kailash, whom we normally associate with high pitched Sufi style music. The “mumma” song is reminiscent of Prasoon Joshi’s “Ma” song from “Tare Zameen Par”.

On a whole, Dasvidaniya is a very honest movie, which will make you emote with it. A very rare thing from a normal bollywood movie. Full marks to debutant director Shashant Shah and the producers Azam Khan and Vinya (who is the co-producer) for choosing such a script, which gives you a simple but most essential message of life.

The message from Dasvidaniya is - we do not consider that even though our death may not be three months from now, but it is going to be there, in three years or thirty years or maybe more, but it is going to be there. So what are we waiting for to actually live our life the way we want to. Let us get stated and live our life!

Ameet Mattoo
New Delhi.