When was the last time you saw a whodunnit in Hindi or in any Indian language which didn’t flatten out into a what-the-heck experience even if started off promisingly?
Applause Entertainment’s Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa (a title so laughably ironic it reinterprets the concept of love) is that rarity in the murder-mystery genre which accesses the intrigue without trampling on the characters’ veracity.
It takes us stealthily into a roomful of relatives and friends in a cavernous bungalow in the back of the beyond, where every leaf in the folds of foliage whispers a secret. Writer-director Rajat Kapoor, who also plays an unobtrusive and rather redundant role in the film, makes telling use of the mysterious home. His usual cinematographer, Rafey Mahmood, peers in and out of the rooms and the passageways, making them seem like living characters.
As for the characters, they are impeccably cast, unerring in their projection of ambiguous bonhomie, except maybe for one somewhat over-hysterical performance by Koel Puri, who plays the murdered man’s wife. She can be forgiven for her overwrought emotional condition. The rest of the actors are spot-on, as much so as in Dhurandhar where every actor seemed born to play his or her part. Ditto here. I searched for the casting director’s name. But in vain.
Rajat Kapoor’s old favourites Vinay Pathak and Ranveer Shorey play muscular parts, beefing up their brief space with words and gestures that you may not catch at first part. Pathak plays a murderable jerk. Shorey plays a philosopher who spouts wisdom on Pluto and Nietzsche at a get-together to celebrate Raman and Jayanti’s tenth wedding anniversary.
Their wedding-anniversary cake has a life of its own, almost like the flowers in Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, but more,shall we say, immediate and less romantic.
The couple at the cusp of a crisis they haven’t foreseen is played by Neil Bhoopalam and Palomi Ghosh, who are so natural and at home, even when in a state of utter discomfort, that you wonder why such talent goes to waste in our cinema while the mediocre thrive.
Gosh, I am digressing: the one thing this short-and-blunt, sharply edited (by Suresh Pai) film never does. The character study is sharp, and the mood is mischievously portentous. Although the narration begins with a murder and though the mood is tangibly tense, there is a constant sense of playfulness in the plot punctuated by Sagar Desai’s piano pieces, which ping a sweetened sting.
Rajat Kapoor’s films are technically proficient without drawing attention to themselves. This whodunit is no exception. What sort of bogs the storytelling down is the clutter of characters. There are too many people populating the plot. They are interesting, no doubt, and played by actors who know their parts in and out. But by the time you figure out who is who and why they all hate Sohrab Handa while pretending to love him, the show is over. And not just for Sohrab Handa.
