Begum Jaan: 5 things that works against the Vidya Balan starrer!

Powerful dialogues, fierce performances and a brilliant backdrop - that's what the idea of Begum Jaan seemed like when the theatrical trailer was launched. Cut to the movie and everything seems to be misplaced and misused. There are some terrific performances, not to be denied - what with Vidya Balan, Gauahar Khan packing in some great punch.

But Begum Jaan, as a film falls completely flat. While the trailer gave us a sense of hope and rejoice, the film is a total letdown. For more than a few reasons. You don't connect with whatever's going on and the mishmash is jarring. Except a few stellar scenes and some top-notch act, spearheaded by Balan and Khan, this movie has almost nothing to offer. 

Here are 5 things that absolutely worked against the movie. 

Abrupt endings to scenes:
There is one thing that's amiss. Synchronisation. There's absolutely no connection between scenes and that's where the film's screenplay falters. At 135 minutes runtime, the film seems slow much because of the abruptness in the plot. Suddenly, there are guns blaring and suddenly there's a lull. The scenes are not quite well defined and that's a huge problem.

A lot of chunks removed:
I have watched Rajkahini. The film, even though is 3 hours long, is a powerful testament to the undying spirit of the women who fought for their freedom against the independence. Begum Jaan is a scene-by-scene copy of the Bengali film. There's absolutely no scene which has been freshly added. From the beginning to the end, it's Rajkahni, sans some very important scenes. In the original, because of the runtime, the makers included a lot of situations and incidents in the background that add more gravitas to Begum Jaan's barrative. Here, the movie is only around that one character and the partition drama is finished off in no time. So the in-between portions seem unexplained and unfinished. 

The melodrama:
Begum Jaan is intended to be a powerful, gritty film about these women who battle for their own rights. Instead, their fight is reduced to constant abusing, screaming and all the more melodrama. There's more pomp than fervour, there's more screeching than lines and even the powerful dialogues are shot in such a dramatic way just for mere impact that they lose the essence and the intent. Come on, we have seen Balan do her dialogues with that masala spin in The Dirty Picture and she's the one who made her silences talk in a film like No One Killed Jessica. But here, somehow it doesn't really leave you inspired. 

Bad use of characters and actors:
Just like dialogues, some characters also seem extremely misplaced in the remake. For example, Abir Chatterjee and Jisshu Sengupta who played the same roles that Vivek Mushran and Chunkey Pandey play in the Hindi remake, did a far superior job than these two. Why? Somehow, in the Hindi version, it seems that the makers were more interested in 'the element of surprise in their casting' rather than making use of those characters. Chunkey's menacing look is supposed to give you shivers down the spine but that's all you get only from his first look pictures. In the movie, he barely finds a place and his Kabir is evil, but very far from being scary. And about Vivek, he seems like a total misfit for the role he plays. But yes, the girls have been well cast, except Mishti Chakraborty who's only job was to shoot the whole film with a deadpan expression and scream in one scene. But we did love her breakdown scene, hence we feel she was under utilised and how. Nasseruddin Shah's character is so badly sketched that there's no room to even call out for a performance. 

No emotions:
At the end of it all, Begum Jaan becomes just a machinery which fails to preach what it intends to. While it's supposed to be an ode to women power and feminism, it becomes an emotionless cacophony of sequences which fails to connect with the audiences. With a disappointing first half, you already lose your patience and interest and despite the second half being much better, it falls way short of being a masterpiece that it could have easily been. Sorry, but this one fails to evoke tears or the cheers!