debi_chat

Remember the song "Perhaps Love"? it went something like.."some say love is everything/ some say they don't know.."...you would be forced to encounter this dilemma over and over while watching this movie.

incredibly enough, the plot is a love-quadrangle ! one wonders if there is anything left in this genre that the oxygen channel has played to its death...but rituparno does a tremendous job of redefining adultery and its legacy on a marriage.

what I liked most about the movie is the extent to which the characters were real. This is a movie where the characters speak like I speak, falter like I falter...even their mobile ringtones, their accessories...everything reeks of contemporary-ness (i made that word up)...urban, educated, working class...captured perfectly on the canvas and then rituparno has proceeded to paint the story of love, lust, trust, security, duty, responsibility, morality and so on...

watch it if you are a bong (and you know who you are), watch it if you are not one...

I have read both the book and saw the movie today. The storyline is so powerful that almost any script or screenplay would have done justice to it. So nothing much there. However, this is still a beautiful movie because it makes one think and feel, just like the book. Watching it is not like watching a documentary on a failed state and feeling sympathetic towards people suffering under an oppressive regime, but is like watching any other common man's story unfold, across generations, across continents. Amir's cowardice, his guilt, his dilemmas and finally his choosing a way of redemption could have been a story of any of us. There isn't a single infallible character to look up to and idolize but all of them are gray, just like all of us.

Another important observation is that the movie does a great job of chronicling the lives of Afghans through the twenty some years of turbulent political scenarios. The vibrant, care-free childhood represents Kabul before the Russian invasion and the desolate, shattered remains of the city echo what the Taliban has done to it.

The child actors deserve 'thumbs up' all the way. They can put any matured actor to shame.

If you have not yet seen the movie or read the book, just walk into the theater keeping in mind that you are going to witness a multi-layered story woven on a multi-colored fabric of human emotions and sentiments. This movie is not meant to stir anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban feelings but to feel the trials of human existence.

I read some of the external reviews linked to the site and I must confess I do not see the point in writing reviews that summarize the storyline like a distant spectator and point out technical details about amazing cinematography or something similar. At least for this movie, one should try to connect to it rather than judging it objectively.