kalank

*ing: Madhuri Dixit, Sonakshi Sinha, Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sanjay Dutt

Rated: 6/10

A heavy duty romance with a visual and verbal onslaught drawn from the Partition saga may not be a regular Karan Johar kind of movie. But Kalank, with a soaked out star cast in which Madhuri Dixit and Sonakshi Singh agree to be sidebars along with Sanjay Dutt, would definitely cash in on initial curiosity which it does with a big opening. But is it popular stuff? Far from it. Overly dramatical, visually artistic and banking on dialogues which are much too theatrical, the film will go down into the shelf as a magnum opus which was brilliantly laid-out but somewhere down the line forgot how the soul of cinema has been hijacked by populist GenX mores.

Alia (Roop) as the central point of the film is brilliant — a stunning persona which encases a free spirit, histrionic acumen and a screen presence that carries the film on petit shoulders. As the Kohl-lined bastard son of her father-in-law, Varun Dhawan, aka Zafar, simmers much like his “auzaar-making cauldron” both not having much to do except simmer without business. Aditya Roy Kapur does his bit to the screen where ever he finds an entry into the storyline which is not pretty often. Centred around a love story when the Hindu Muslim divide on the other side of the border was just about concretising, there is a lot of “how to make it sound grand” effort in a film which encapsulates the drama and the ambience of Partition days much like a splashy painting by a master artist. A lot of colour, a lot of big talk, a lot of deliberation, a lot of costume, make-up and hitech shots of everyday life do make you sit up and look in awe. But there is nothing much in the story where all the situations are so over the top that you are left wanting for some kind of a reality, to-the-ground moment in the film which it does not have. Madhuri, despite pancake coming home for free, fails to clear the wrinkles and Sonakshi is grand but in an empty kind of way. Sanju Baba merely stares down as a veteran who can only stand and stare, to no avail.

Alia is the only show-stopper in this film, the only heartbeat. The other thing you could put your hands together in this film is the art director who makes this one a visual treat.