Via Darjeeling - Movie Review

Director: Arindam Nandy
Cast: Vinay Pathak, Kay Kay Menon, Sonali Kulkarni, Parvin Dabas, Sandhya Mridul
Rating:  
Seeking strong inspiration for its story-telling technique from Akira Kurosawa’s Oscar nominated Rashomon, how one wishes Via Darjeeling should have even derived the story from the original. For the uninitiated, Rashomon is a Japanese tale about a mysterious murder recalled from four differing points of view. Which version is true is left for the audience to decide with the open ending that it opts for. But are we audiences open to the idea of open endings?

Ankur (Kay Kay Menon) and Rimli (Sonali Kulkarni) are honeymooning in Darjeeling. Suddenly the husband goes missing whereby Inspector Robin Bose (Vinay Pathak) is summoned to solve the mystery. The only clues that he gets from Rimli is of a taxi driver Ankur had fought with and a mysterious man following the couple.

Years later, gossiping over drinks and dinner on a rainy evening, Bose recounts the story to his friends. Subsequently the friends try to reopen the shut case amongst themselves with each one giving their own version of the story as per their sensibilities.

Rono (Rajat Kapoor) is a conventional journalist who sensationalizes the story defining the mysterious man as Bonny (Parvin Dabbas), Rimli’s old lover and assumes that Ankur was kidnapped by the taxi-driver.

Priti (Simone Singh) builds up on Rono’s story by victimizing the female on the hands of both the men in her life, treading the typical chauvinistic way symbolic of Ekta Kapoor soap-operas. As per her version Rimli was pregnant with Bonny’s child. On knowing this Ankur, feeling betrayed, leaves Rimli never to return.

Kaushik (Prashant Narayan), an aspiring filmmaker tweaks the entire story giving it a twist of the Abbas-Mustan variety. He defines Bonny as a contract killer hired by Ankur to knock off Rimli on the age-old idea of being the sole heir of her ancestral property.

Though the director chooses an unconventional narration pattern, the different versions of the story follow a rather conventional path. Each of the fictional independent episodes happens to be the most common outcomes to the given situation. Moreover with opting for an open and rather abrupt end, the film leaves several questions unanswered. Which version of the story is true is left to your individual imagination, assumption and selection. The central idea of the film is how perspective distorts reality and makes the absolute truth incomprehensible.

To an extent, the narration also fervently reminds of the closed-room-conversation from 12 Angry Men (remade in Hindi as Ek Ruka Hau Faisla ) with constantly varying versions of a common event through the course of the film. However Via Darjeeling lacks a convincing climax, which was the highlight of the original.

It’s interesting to see Kay Kay Menon, Sonali Kulkarni and Parvin Dabbas enact different emotions within the same backdrop in every storyteller’s version. Vinay Pathak gets the additional advantage of being both in the contemporary conversation and flashback portion of each version and enacts his part proficiently. Sandhya Mridul who acts inert for the initial portions, springs in a surprise subsequently. Rajat Kapoor, Simone Singh and Prashant Narayanan are crisply competent.

Via Darjeeling is a thriller that makes you think not through the course of the film but once the outing is over. It is but obvious for the viewer to expect answers from the movie rather than search for the solution in their mind.

Alas this self-proclaimed psychological thriller teases your psyche and doesn’t go via the logical route.