Mausam

Even though I am aware of how much people around me hated Pankaj Kapur's Mausam, allow me to say I quite liked it. However, the last 15 minutes of the film are atrocious and unforgivable. Mausam takes extraordinary poetic license and plays with impossible series of extraordinary circumstances, but it tells a story rather endearing and indeed well-told. The film marks a possible extent of migration muslim families have had to undertake sadly in order to merely survive. The move from Eastman colour to the exquisite colours of Scotland is rewarding. It transports you back to the days of letters and trunk calls, when reaching someone special was also special in its own way, when there were no ways to be "in touch" with your lover every bloody minute even if from oceans apart.

But most importantly, this is a film about waiting and love, perhaps two of the most beautiful things mankind has ever known. It is only apt therefore, that the film contains time within itself. Not only the narrtive, but also the images age as you watch them closely. That is an achievement, Kapur sahab. Even though the entire section on Gujrat 2002 should be simply eliminated.

A word has to be put in for Shahid Kapur who does rather well. The setting of punjabi village lends to him a character we rarely get to see in his urban films where he remains an ordinary performer. I shall stay away from recommending Mausam to anyone except those I know really well. But if you are waiting on an empty island for help to arrive with a copy of this film, I'd say go ahead and take the plunge.