Thursday, December 13, 2012

Movie review - Main Gandhi ko nahi mara

I was left wondering how this Gandhiji related title was suitable for a film based on dementia/Alzheimer's. 

Anupam Kher dons the role of an absent minded professor, whose absentmindedness is actually the beginning of a more serious brain deterioration.  It could be age-related, because he is retired from active service for a couple of years, but still remembers some incidents with vivid detail.  Urmila Matondkar is the only daughter between two boys, older one away in the US and younger one still in college.  Not wanting to trouble her older brother she takes up the responsibility of caring for her father - taking him to doctors and worries over him.  The younger brother immaturely talks about admitting his dad in an 'asylum' which angers Urmila and rightly so.

Things shoot out of control when Urmila's four year boyfriend's parents visit to discuss the possible marriage when her dad bursts out in anger for having kept a teacup inadvertly on Gandhiji's picture.  Urmila is caught in between her father's deteriorating mental health and the insensitivity of her boyfriend.  Its when she finds him married that her world collapses, but she has to pull on for her father's sake - he has had more instances of running away from home and even setting his room on fire.  He repeatedly says that it he did not kill Gandhiji.

A good doctor comes into the picture and his approach turns around things.  The family unlocks their father's obsession with his guilty feeling.  An unexpected experiment turns out to be a success and things get back to normalcy.

Its only possible in Indian movies that the topic starts off as brain dysfunction and ends up in patriotism! 









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