‘Vanvas’ movie review: Nana Patekar lifts heavy weight in this clichéd film

Nana Patekar in a scene from ‘Vanvas’ Photo Credit: YouTube/Zee Studios

Bollywood loves to make a sentimental movie by rehashing the abuse done by parents in almost every decade. Anil Sharma’s exile feels like the rebirth of Avatar (1983), Heaven (1990), and gardener (2003), stories where a nurturing father suffers in his sunset years at the hands of his selfish sons.

Sharma who started his career with sensitive family dramas Shradhanjali And binding of raw threads takes a break from mutiny There was a rush to revisit a familiar template that remained relevant to mainstream search. However, he has forgotten to adjust the volume of the background sound with changes in style and update the formula with time. Old in design, dramatic in presentation and full of patriarchal rituals, it follows the predictable script where the parents are always a patriarch with wealth and the savior is an orphan male with a heart of gold.

The heavy lifting is left to the flamboyant Patekar, with few surprises in the storytelling. The veteran artiste adopts Deepak Tyagi’s quirks and quirks to create an emotional connect with the audience. Taking the model established by Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan forward, Patekar adds his magnetic appeal to create a moving portrait of a strong father who is transformed into a fragile personality due to a fading memory and broken relationships. Supported by poetic monologues written by Sharma, he creates a poignant portrait of a withering soul in danger of losing the memories of his soulmate Vimala. Khushboo plays a rare special role in Hindi cinema and provides emotional connect to the story. Left alone in Varanasi by his selfish sons and daughters-in-law, Deepak is shocked when a playful scoundrel Veeru (Utkarsh Sharma) helps him.

The good thing is that Sharma tries to reflect the overall culture of Varanasi. Of course, it has statues of Lord Shiva, Hanuman and Ganga but Patekar also talks about the relevance of federalism and invokes Karl Marx in Varanasi. Sharma’s vision goes beyond the ghats to delight the audience Visit Of Buddha’s Sarnath. He also incorporates the region’s dancing girl and nautanki culture into the story and names his characters after iconic characters from Hindi films. There is a hero (cinder)There is a Meena (drunker) And then there’s the aunt (Ashwini Kalsekar) to create a powerful imagination of past and present, but somehow barring a few thought-provoking moments, the written word doesn’t translate to the screen.

Told from a parent’s perspective, this black-and-white exploration of characters and events leaves little room for color. Even the family audience of television, which the film appears to address, is demanding more layers in its stories these days. Sharma has dedicated this film to his parents and it seems that he has made it to project his son Utkarsh. Dealing with the family turmoil in Deepak’s house, the makers spend a lot of time creating a world around Veeru that feels completely staged. A work in progress, Utkarsh remains a satellite that needs the Sun to reflect light.

In fact, there is a line in the film where Veeru’s girlfriend Meena, played by Simrat Kaur, urges him to learn how to express emotions from Deepak. When she says, “Learn from them”, it seems as if Meena is urging Utkarsh to learn from Patekar how to make high-pitched melodrama believable.

Exile is currently running in theaters