A wonderful piece of craftsmanship

Sujoy Ghosh sure knows his craft. He has a simple thriller story and ensures that the audience is at the tip of their seats for most part of the two hours. It may not be the finger nail chewing stuff and yet it is engrossing enough to keep the popcorn eating to a formality. While some would believe that the suspense quotient of the film is far lower than in ‘Kahaani’, I think the filmmaker in this outing ensures that the narration keeps you engrossed at all points in time with the happenings.

The storyline is about Vidya Sinha (Vidya Balan), a single mother who is making the best of the challenges in Chandan Nagar with a daughter who is paralysed below her hip and thus on a wheelchair. She is waiting for the clearance for a trip to the US which will lead to a surgical alteration of the medical condition of her daughter Mini (Naisha Khanna). She returns from office only to realise that her daughter has been kidnapped. She literally runs on the road only to meet with a terrible accident. She is now in coma and the investigating officer Indrajit (Arjun Rampal) enters the scene. Alongside Indrajit is his colleague Pranab Halder (Kharaj Mukherjee). Indrajit is shocked when he sees Vidya and believes her to be Durga, his former wife and a kidnapper from Kalimpong.

The rest of the narrative is about how Durga, an admin staff in a private school meets up with Mini (Tumisha Sharma), a little girl always before the principal for having dozed off in class. A chanced comment that she is not allowed to sleep at home gets her thinking. Herself a victim of child abuse, she scents a crime under-cover and works hard to expose the child’s predator uncle Mohit (Jugal Hansraj). Even as she tries hard to expose the incident, she is stonewalled by the victim’s grandmother (Amba Sanyal) who is powerful enough to buy the local police.

Saying anything more of the two parallel tales would be playing a spoilsport. Watch how the filmmaker connects the two stories and how. Albeit with needless dramatics, he takes you to a finale. If anywhere, it is here that Sujoy falters. He just cannot resist the temptation of falling for the regular format and gets a tad loud and theatrical with the climax. While the entire narration is told with a high degree of sensitivity and class, the climax gets loud and filmy – Hindi filmy. This is the undoing of the film.

The film truly belongs to the punch-filled presence of Vidya Balan. Like in the earlier outing, she is in complete command and has the right sensitivity to take the script along. She is a treat to watch and notwithstanding all the weight she needs to hide, she has a character which goes well with it all. Her performance is top class and is a true reflection of her understanding of the craft. ‘Kahaani 2’ is a wonderful piece of craftsmanship aided and abetted with finesse by Vidya Balan.

Kahaani 2
Cast: Vidya Balan, Arjun Rampal and Kharaj Mukherjee
Direction : Sujoy Ghosh
Genre : Thriller
Plus points: Vidya Balan and script
Minus points: Loud climax
Rating :

L Ravichander