JOIN USMrigashree Pant hadn’t expected a ‘house full’ board for Piku, when she went to Satyam Cinema complex last Friday. Going to watch the movie two weeks after its release, she was under the impression that Bombay Velvet would be the one with more audience.
It came as a pleasant surprise for Pant, a documentary filmmaker from Jamia Millia Islamia, that the entire complex was filled with people of all age groups who’d come with their entire families to watch Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone-starrer Piku.
While Bollywood has tried its hand at thriller movies, like the recent NH10 and Badlapur or the upcoming Yash Raj production Titli, the audience in India is generally fond of light-hearted, positive, feel good, family movies like Piku, or some of the blockbusters in the past like the Munna Bhai series, Rang de Basanti and 3 Idiots, to name a few.
The beauty of such movies is that along with having sufficient dose of humour and comedy, they also convey a powerful message. While Lage Raho Munna Bhai shows how Mahatma Gandhi’s beliefs and practices still hold immense significance in our lives, Rang de Basanti instilled a sense of patriotism and the inspiration to change, in the youth of the country. Similarly, the movie 3 idiots was equally strong in making us believe that “kamyabi ke peeche mat bhaago...kaabil bano, kaabil...kamyabi toh saali jhak maarke peeche bhagegi.”
It is these dialogues and the essence of such movies that makes people watch them repeatedly. Similar is the tone of Shoojit Sirkar’s Piku. While it makes one laugh hysterically at the random conversations between Piku (Deepika Padukone) and the crusty Bhashkor (Amitabh Bachchan), it also shows the simple and ground reality of any aged man whose life revolves around his ‘apparent constipation’ and his boxful of homeopathic pills.
The jibber-jabber of Bhashkor and the hyper-active Piku go well along with Sirkar’s exploration of human relationships. The plot speaks about an independent daughter taking care of her father, the issue of their ancestral house being sold, and the very fact that after a certain age, parents are as much a responsibility of their children as the children were of their parents, during their days as infants.
Using some scarce and unusual pegs, which at the same time are a part of the daily routine of every middle class family’s life, Sirkar came up with something off the edge and extremely adorable.
“Piku takes one back to the era of ‘slice of life’ films. We’ve had enough of action and sex in Bollywood, and so the movie’s inclination towards human values and these little everyday details, make it a rather enjoyable film,” says Pant.
While most directors struggle to portray such ground realities on the big screen, Sircar’s effort seems extremely smooth yet professionally commendable.
“I like how most of the characters are grey, just like how we are in life. It’s great to see no hype about Pikus’s love life or partners for a change,” she adds.
However, Abhishek Dutta, an independent filmmaker, is of the view that Bollywood already has enough of these light-hearted family movies and we need a few movies
that are in the exact opposite strain.
“Nonetheless, Piku is a very sweet and heartwarming film. It manages to touch us despite being unconventional with its choice of protagonists,” Dutta tells Metrolife.
It is thus quite evident that the movie manages to touch every heart. From an 80-year-old to a school going child, everyone enjoys such movies, because after all, one watches movies to relieve themselves of the daily stress and the humdrum affairs of life.
“The movie is a deliciously reminiscent of films like Bawarchi, Sansar or Baghban, with of course less melodrama. Quite incidentally, Piku doesn’t feel like a movie...it’s like you’re watching any other family in India,” ends a
joyous Pant.