Delhi 6 – A Courageous Attempt

It requires great courage to dedicate an entire movie to Monkey man (the kaala bandar episode which occured in Delhi in 2001) and using it intelligently to deliver a strong social message to the people. A lot was expected of Rakesh Mehra after the brilliant Rang de basanti and Delhi 6 has been more or less lived up to the expectations.

Delhi 6 is the story of a young American Roshan (Abhishek bachchan) of Indian origin, who comes to India for the first time accompanying his ailing grandmother (Wahida Rehman). Little does he know that the quick trip will turn into the longest journey of his life - a journey within. Being born and brought up in America and having lead a very western lifestyle Roshan is not familiar with the sites and smells, the food and culture, the religion and beliefs, and customs of India . He thought that Dadi had left her family and loved ones back in America, only to realize that how wrong he was. The warmth and affection of the neighborhood embraced him with open arms. Amidst all this he meets the beautiful Bittu (Sonam Kapoor), who is looking for identity and expression (she wants to win the Indian Idol) and wants to break free from the typical Indian social structure, to whom Roshan is destined to lose his heart.

There are several parallel tracks in the story such as the rivalry between the two brothers, Pawan Mahlotra and Ompuri and Bittu’s dream of becoming an Indian idol but Mehra has woven all the tracks quite beautifully and has executed the screenplay brilliantly. The use of the Monkey man episode to deliver a strong social message is simply commendable although Mehra gets too preachy in the end. Abhishek does full justice to his role except the avoidable American accent. Sonam, in whatever screen time she has, is brilliant and is looking stunning. Mehra deserves special accolades for extracting special performaces from the brilliant supporting cast comprising Rishi Kapoor, Pawan Mahlotra, Om Puri, Waheeda Rehman, Supriya Pathak, Divya Dutta, Atul Kulkarni and others. Further, Binod Pradhan deserves a special award for the beautiful cinematography and the way he has captured the beauty of Delhi and specially Chandni Chowk on the camera. But Mehra loses his way a bit in the climax by the uncalled introduction of Amitabh Bachchan and the childish scene involving him and Abhishek Bachchan. On the whole, there may be some flaws in the movie but this is a movie made from the heart and succeeds in delivering message to the people while being entertaining at the same time.

Positives

• Rakesh Mehra’s brilliant Direction
• Binod Pradhan’s cinematography
• A R Rehman’s spell bounding music
• Sonam Kapoor dazzles in the small role
• Outstanding performance from the supporting cast
• Abhishek Bachchan sans his fake American Accent.

Negatives

• The Climax – Amitabh in the Bruce Almighty avtaar
• Repeated Occurrence of the Ramlila sequence
• Too Preachy in the climax

Rating : ***