One of the most bittersweet movies viewing experiences that ached my heart as the story progressed was when I saw the Mukesh chapter directed from Dil Bechara starring Sushant Singh Rajput and Sanjana Sanghi in lead roles.
An adaptation of the john green 2012 novel the fault in our stars which was also adapted into a film with the same name in 2014. Dil Bechara is based in Jamshedpur and focuses on a beautiful relationship that blossoms between Kizie and Manny played by Sanjana and Sushant, respectively.
A film that showcases young love and two souls meeting souls that can empathize and connect with one another as life plays its vicious oscillating games giving them a chance only fleetingly to live and love with absolute abandon.
Both suffering from terminal illnesses one presumably with thyroid cancer that spreads to the lungs and another currently in remission suffered from osteosarcoma and lost a leg due to it the movie has been through an extremely tough journey and finally when it is here to be viewed by millions of people we are in the direst circumstance globally and don’t have our charming hero to celebrate it with but I had an overwhelming rush of emotions that kept on swaying as Sushant Singh Rajput appeared in the frame.
I couldn’t help but appreciate the genuine attempt at telling a story made by the entire team through this romantic film each talent that appeared in this movie from the supporting characters to the lead pair seemed to belong in this world.
Created in Jamshedpur I can’t think of a single talent that felt out of place. In this one hour and 41-minute film and credit has to be given to the impeccable casting by Mukesh Chabra. Sahil Vaid where there’s JP (Jagdish Pandey), Manny’s best friend and actor that has put forth commendable performances in several films as the ride-or-die.
The best friend is sincere and earnest in his role. Kizie’s parents played by Bengali Veterans Swastika Mukherjee and Saswata Chatterjee have some of the most memorable sequences in the film. The father being the Nat geo-obsessed carefree yet loving figure of the family and the mother constantly anxious and overbearing skeptical of any new company in her daughter’s life and dedicated her entire life in protecting and prolonging.
The moment shared with her my mother once told me there isn’t a worse thought that can cross a mother’s mind than losing her own child before she departs from this world and Swastika has beautifully captured and communicated exactly that the sinking feeling you get the moment your own baby is suffering and hanging on to dear life.
As someone rightly said mothers and daughters never truly apart maybe in distance but never in heart and the film showcases this essence with conviction Sanjana Sanghi has matured as an actor so much since her first appearance in the 2011 film Rockstar.
Sanjana is confident formidable and encapsulates the need for a girl to find anything beyond the routine to experience the simple pleasures like any young adult her social suffocation and finally wanting to feel whole falling helplessly and madly in love with his soul mate.
They wrote about in songs and only fictional novels it finally happened for her Sanjana has put forth a very sweet and heartfelt performance. I don’t know where to start when it comes to Manny, I know very well that this film and especially Sushant’s portrayal of Manny has a huge recall value and many people will revisit the several moments in this film as ironically.
The light at the end of the tunnel, the glimmer of hope, and the ray of sunshine of Dil Bechara is Sushant Singh Rajput. He is the one who looks at the positives even when surrounded by dread. He is the one that reminds Kizie’s father that even if these dreams might seem silly they are still worth striving for, he is the one who hesitantly states and tries to convince everyone that he isn’t scared of anything in life.
So, Shanthi is effortlessly charming in this film and the chemistry shared between him and Sanjana is infectious and extremely grounded. In reality dialogue writers Shashank Khaitan and Suprotim Sengupta need to be appreciated for their natural writing that makes.
The interaction among several characters like any other interaction you may have with friends or family. The unexplainable manner in which Manny feels drawn to Kizie never coming across as overbearing making her smile simply through his wit.
The moment shared between them is beautiful be it the initial reluctance to listen to a song that eventually becomes their thread of exploration together. Manny’s constant need to transition into Bollywood movie references and dialogues mid-conversation, his small glance at the review mirror, she looks at him in absolute awe quite to the contrary of what people perceived from the trailer that we were going to get an over-energetic and boisterous Hindi cinema hero in the form of Manny.
He is just a charming boy who gets fulfillment in other people’s happiness who never wants others to feel sympathy and sadness for him who is rarely vulnerable and a person if who can trust you will provide you the world and everything beyond it.
Mukesh chapter has taken the perfect amount of creative liberty in the Hindi adaptation of the overwhelmingly emotional, The Fault In Our Stars where what keeps Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters constantly seeking answers in life is an abrupt and unexplainable ending to a novel.
An imperial affliction wrote by the obscure writer Peter van Houten played by Willem Dafoe. The journey to seek answers in Dil Bechara is through an unfinished song created by an artist Abhimanyu Veer played by Saif Ali Khan.
Jonita Gandhi and rider’s song Main Tumhara stayed with me the most and that is the thread of this film Saif’s prophetic line still leaves a sense of introspection within me. Stating the reason for his song to be incomplete it’s a deep and memorable cameo by Khan the film.
In many ways imparts several life lessons and this constant need of humans to seek absolutes for answers for everything to be presented in black and white. The reality is that when Manny looks teary-eyed into Kizie’s eyes asking her we live like this, right? You can only comfort someone with a resounding yes but deep inside you never really know.
The doomed romance is a genre of film that falls into two sub-categories: one the internal doomed romance where you would assume eventually the main characters would persevere from the trials and tribulations and eventually end up together. It sadly never happens the most notable examples of such a theme are movies like Lala land and 500 days of summer.
The external doomed romance includes films where you know the inevitable end of the dreadful and painful misery that will follow the masterpieces that fall under this category include films like A Walk to Remember and the classic 1970 film Love Story.
Dil Bechara like these films develops an inconceivable pain within my heart and especially in the last 30 minutes of the film. I couldn’t help myself but uncontrollably weep as I knew what would be the fate of this love story between Kizie and Manny.
Sushant once said perhaps the difference between what is miserable and that which is spectacular lies on the leap of faith and Manny embodied precisely that the leap of faith taken to see the bright side as he is surrounded by just misery.
I didn’t want this to end I wanted Dil Bechara to last just a bit longer for Manny to take Kizie on another date and open an imaginary door. Just once more to shoot another over-the-top action sequence for their feature film just once more take her to the beautiful view just once more reply back on the phone line to she says.
Movie lovers will never get closer to the way you departed I can keep on contemplating how you would have carved your career in the future years to come as you had so much to offer. But I know for everyone affected by your departure they have been forced to introspect and re-engineer themselves with the way they interact with one another devoid of judgment and malice you will never be forgotten you.
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