A first reading of this film comes across as a lofty inspiring story of true grit and wilful determination in the face of painful, irreversible personal trauma. But that turns out to be superficial.
"Shwaas" the way it is portrayed and sequenced, and here it is entirely the inexperienced director's mistake, seems to suggest that eyesight is more important than blindness, its great to be able to see and that the blind are missing out on so much of life. All of these statements are obviously true but are POLITICALLY INCORRECT and highly judgmental!
If the makers of Shwaas want to us be sensitive to the little boy, now that he's being operated upon and will go blind, how about showing some respect and sensitivity to the blind too?? This movie doesn't even pay lip service -- at the very end, there are couple of scenes showing some blind persons at work (as if to say, yea, they can work too..) but not much else. Aside from direction, it suffers from serious over-acting by Amruta Subhash who really does a disservice to the efforts of Sandeep Kulkarni (the doctor) and Ashwin Chitale (the kid). She drives all the gravity out entirely by herself.
The subject matter has been bungled completely, and the director's lack of maturity shows. No doubt this is much better fare than 99% of usual Bollywood crap. But if they expect to withstand the critical glare of a mature audience they better be impartial in their presentation.
Serious viewers are NOT blind -- then can 'see' thru the deception here that only one side of the issue is explored as if the boy's life story ends when he becomes blind. Hello?? Thats where it really begins!!!
"Sparsh" by Sai Paranjape explores this subject from a blind man's POV. Naseerudin Shah is blind and its a take on his life. In Shwaas, the boy becomes blind. But what next?
