Kalank Review - An Ambitiously Made Tragic Drama That Awfully Fails

Suhansid Srikanth

Abhishek Varman's ambitious period drama 'Kalank' is a weirdly compiled set pieces desperately trying to hit a emotional chord while it barely manages to be engaging!

Every five minutes you get a confrontation scene. Either Varun and Aditya Roy meet and talk.. Or Alia and Madhuri.. And then, Madhuri and Sanjay Dutt.. Phir, Sanjay Dutt and Aditya Roy.. Also, Varun and Madhuri.. In addition to this, Alia and Varun meet each other every now and then! They talk and talk and talk and talk about the state of their lives being the way it is!

The story is terrifically intense and dramatic as possible! There is a tangled relationship between almost every characters. Madhuri and Sanjay Dutt holds a past. Madhuri and Varun share a disturbed relationship as much as Sanjay and Aditya! Alia and Aditya live in a compromised marriage! To toggle this even more, there is an antagonist angle as well, involving the clash between press and a community. Everytime these characters come face to face with each other, drama bursts out! Dialogues take over! Words are spurred out with poetry and philosophy like sworded feathers!

There is drama enticed with irony of life in almost every scene of the film. Be it the first time Zafar meets Roop or Satya gets happily jealous about Roop and Dev getting along with each other or when Bahaar Begum starts dancing again.. It is a high on musical that lends all its strengths and drama from Sanjay Leela Bhansali's universe! Except the fact that it lacks the passion that characters wobble up with in his films!

But.. with almost three hours long narration, one gets easily drained out! In the initial 30 minutes, you get three songs.. one introducing Alia, one for Varun and one on Madhuri.. There are two item songs featuring Kriti and Kiara! A set piece CGI dumped bullfight! They happen and consume chunk of the time! And when they are over, you are off the track of the emotional impulse the film was giving you!

After a point, all the characters come off as dialogbaazi! Sonakshi Sinha was affecting as Satya but we don't get to see much of her! She really makes you buy the woman she tries to portray! On the other hand, Alia is all the way on the film! But you hardly feel a connect to her situation! The entire Zafar - Roop track that forms the crux of the film doesn't live up to the intensity it needs to have! You don't get what and why Roop falls for Zafar! Yet you keep hearing them uttering rumiesque lines like 'This is a love that is stronger than that of sun and moon!'.

Madhuri Dixit acts detached (felt someone like Tabu could have added a touch to the character) as Sanjay Dutt and Aditya Roy kept managing with monotonous expressions! In a film that keeps on trying to be projected as Roop's story (she narrates it to a writer for no reason at all).. I felt it is more of Zafar's story! And Varun Dhaan scores really good and hits a chord as an actor at several moments!

Binod Pradhan's cinematography is stunning and so are the soundtrack of Pritam! You wish you could chop away some forty minutes off the film. You keep wishing that here the film really ends. But the climax never really comes. And, when it comes, it came off like a stunt choreo disaster. The entire action block involving train is such a moodkiller and letdown for the epicness this film tries to achieve. And there is a Titanic connect afterwards. About how different the characters would have lived if things didn't get messed up! While you wish the same way about the film!

Bottomline

Abhishek Varman's 'Kalank' ends up as an energy draining experience for the viewer despite having handful of drama, poetry, stars, stunning visuals and songs!

Rating : 2.5/5