Kalank’s director Abhishek Verman, who had shown immense promise with his launch vehicle, 2 States (2014), has also proved to be unequal to the task.
Love stories in times of communal strife during Partition have enticed the filmmakers of successive generations but barring rare ones such as Deepa Mehta ( Earth/1999), most have failed to pull off an engaging film. It unfolds amid mounting Hindu-Muslim tensions during the troubled years of 1944-46 at a fictional town of Husnabad near Lahore, where all protagonists live. This romance does not blossom in ordinary times. An encounter with Zafar - the local Lothario who has no qualms in sleeping around with women either with their consent or in lieu of cash – happens soon thereafter, setting the stage for a forbidden romance which wreaks havoc all around. Once trapped in a loveless marriage, she finds a getaway at Bahar Begum’s (Madhuri Dixit) bustling kotha to learn classical singing and dance from her. The hunt begins and ends with Roop (Alia Bhatt), a feisty girl who accepts the proposal only because she has a poor family to support. The film begins with a contrived situation Satya (Sonakshi Sinha), suffering from a terminal illness, is on a desperate hunt for a suitable bride for her loving husband (Aditya Roy Kapoor), who could take care of him after her demise. The millennials may be a genre-agnostic tribe but they are not generous enough to put up with any kitsch dug up from the moth-eaten archives of Bollywood. It’s a film totally out of sync with the changing times, thanks to its convoluted plot which is shorn of any novelty despite being repackaged in shiny cellophane. The latest from the K.Jo Factory is, therefore, a wrong movie at a wrong time, which might find it hard to connect with the young audiences whose verdict can make or mar any ambitious venture at the turnstiles these days. It’s a potpourri of all the tropes, which had been done to death in Hindi cinema even before the firstborn of the millennial generation arrived. Kalank is a mishmash of all of this and more. From the Magazine AFSPA: Memories And Mourning In Nagaland’s Cycle Of Violence Manipur Under AFSPA: Poignant Stories Of Rape, Fake Encounter And Unending Wait For Justice Back To Where It Began: Six Decades Later, Assam Continues To Bleed Under AFSPA Darkness At Noon: Stories Of Pain And Suffering In Battle-Scarred Kashmir AFSPA: A Law That Is Discriminatory, Exclusionary, Racist
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