Filhaal...

Filhaal marks the directorial debut of Meghna Gulzar, the daughter of the great filmmaker and poet Gulzar and the popular actress Raakhee. Gulzar is one of my favourite directors so I was quite interested to see what his daughter had to offer. Filhaal is quite a nice film even if it's not perfect, and is generally a watchable drama about family life, human nature, and the fragility of relationships. The premise looked interesting to me: another film based on surrogate childbirth. Mainstream Indian filmmakers really like such themes because they allow them to create melodramatic tearjerkers which often give audiences an opportunity to indulge in their tears. Thankfully, Filhaal is far from being one such movie. It is for the most part subtle and restrained in execution, and although it does have its moments of high emotion (which all of us have), it never looks soapy or overly sentimental. Not everything about the film is convincing, and at times it lacks the ability to captivate, in spite of its appreciable concept. The film stars Tabu and Sushmita Sen and they seem to have a very good rapport with each other. Expectedly, Tabu does very well, but Sushmita gets a meatier part and she is convincing as the supportive and loving friend. Sanjay Suri is also very good, although his role is very passive and at times it feels that he's just there. The film's music, composed by Anu Malik, is so-so, but Asha Bhosle's "Filhaal" is one gem of a song which efficiently enhances the narrative. Overall, Filhaal is not an extraordinary film and at times it loses the point. I think the ending was very sugarcoated, but anyway, I think it's a good debut for Meghna Gulzar and is worth the watch, at least once.

Very poor marketing strategy.

While every effort at intelligent cinema should be encouraged, this effort was like going up the wrong tree.

Every movie maker need to know their audience. In particular for a picture with an unconventional theme as this.

The sad reality is even in 2002 this kind of movie is not appealing to the masses.

A movie can this could have made a great TV serial.

The subject is itself not new. I remember seeing a similar movie 25 years ago starring Victor Bannerjee, Sharmila Tagore and Shabana Azmi.

Filhaal has a lot of beautiful things in it. Sushmita Sen and Tabu are two of them. And I don't just mean their looks but also their performances. Sushmita's performance, in my opinion is the best by an actress so far this year. Meghna Gulzar directs and writes the film beautifully for the most part. Manmohan Singh's camerawork is a feast for the eyes as is Nitin Desai's art direction. They have done it beautifully together. Sanjay Suri gives in a very mature performance and it is a joy to see how much he has grown since Pyaar Mein Kabhi Kabhi. You can really see that Meghana is her father Gulzar's protege in every single scene of the film. But a couple of things stop the film from being a great one. First of all, the Palash Sen character is poorly written, though he does an earnest job of performing it. And secondly, Anu Malik and Gulzar work magic with some of the songs, especially 'Le Chale Doliyon' and the title track but at least two songs in the post interval portions should be removed. Other than that a good solid debut effort. Looking forward to more from this budding new director. Along with Tanuja Chandra and Farhan Akhtar, I believe she is one of the few new directors who have really gotten into the profession to make good entertaining films. 8/10.

The Gorgeous Cinematography that has been a patent of the Indian Cinema is evident in the title song scene-incidentally this is a real melody of a song. Sushmita Sen, after Aankhen where I thought that her performance was underrated, she has prevailed again with a very expressive perf.,whereas Tabu has the eternal quzzical look and she is grossly overarated as an actress similar to Salman Khan and Sharukh Khan. The hysteria about the acting prowess of these so called Stars has to stop since the intelligence of the viewer is being questioned. On a recent poll I have seen Salman Khan is rated as a better actor than Sharukh Khan and he in turn is voted better than Amitab Bachchan. This is absurdity at peak to say the least. There is some immaturity in direction akin to the immature and naive anwers that Beuty Pagent contestants come up with. But for a new Director this is excusable. The movie is watchable.

A highly anticipated movie, for it was from Meghna Gulzar, daughter of celebrated poet-writer-director Gulazar. And more because, 'dil chahta hai' by Farhan Akhtar (son of another famouus poet-writer Javed Akhter)

before this had created a wave of anticipation from this new breed of directors...anyways...the movie written/directed by Meghna Gulzar, is about four people and their journey through a period in their lives where their lives get entangled due to a twist of fate.

The film's theme - surrogate motherhood has been dealt with in other hindi movie before this, but none so sensitively. This is the strong

point of the movie, where Gulzar's sensitivity shines through his daughter's work. Some of the scenes in the movie are handled very well and all the lead actors do a very decent job giving a very sensitive performace. Sanjay Suri and Tabu look great together on the screen and both of them emote very well, Sushmita is good in parts but sometimes her character itself seems confused, thus making her look less convincing. Palash Sen's charcter is the weakest link, it's never clear in the movie, why he does what he does. That's where Meghna fails as a writer. Also the movie has a very jerky narrative in the first half where the viewer is deliberately confused and I wonder if it was intentional...or was the director trying to build some kind of suspense ? I believe the movie should have been played chronolgically. I'll be be lenient to the director and attribute this to her inexperience. The music is good, but the songs break the narrative, especially in the second half.

But in all, a good subject, fair treatment (there is much room for improvement though) and great visuals make this a decent family movie. Also being her first movie, I'll give her a cool 7.0/10.0. But we expect a lot better from her.