Dil Bechara Review

Bharath Vijayakumar

Movies as such aren't and cannot be viewed in isolation and do not exist in vacuum. At any point of time, your reception of a movie is bound to be influenced or impacted a great deal by what is happening around you at a microscopic level and around the society at a macroscopic level. This is true for the makers as well and the ambience around them obviously does reflect on the kind of films they make. But once in a while, it so happens that a movie is made under different circumstances and by the time it hits the screens, it takes an entirely different meaning or the emotions associated with it get amplified. It is tough or to be honest, probably impossible to judge or experience Dil Bechara as a standalone film devoid of the emotions that is now almost inescapable as a result of what had happened to its lead actor recently.

To make it more difficult to process, the film itself deals with something heavy and despite whatever you might think about it as an art form, the film is bound to be quite an emotional experience. Running at just around 100 minutes, Dil Bechara wastes no time in setting things up. The narration starts from the POV of Kizie Basu and we see everyone through her. Enters Immanuel Rajkumar Junior aka Manny and it does take some time to get accustomed to his overzealousness. ( But you understand very soon that he is probably wearing this mask to keep himself occupied and diverted). Their bonding is immediately established and the rest of the film is about how these two individuals in love and battling their own health issues, try to do all within their strength to be the best love for each other.

Sanjana is very good and delivers a mix of cheerfulness and sobriety and she does all this with great subtlety. The focus is more on her initially and Sushant plays second fiddle. He then takes over and towards the later portions of the film and the climax, he is bound to leave you in tears. Saswata Chatterjee and Swastika Mukherjee are required to keep their emotions in check for good reason but you see it through their eyes on what they are going through. Rahman for his part comes up with a score that for the most part is cheerful and soothing.

While the Rajnikanth fan angle does work to an extent, the scenes that use his reference obviously show that very little homework has been done to get these parts right.

Bottomline :

It is probably futile to think about what sort of an impact this film might have had without the unfortunate recent happening. For now, it turns out to be one emotional experience!