For Indian fans, Kalank is undoubtedly the most anticipated work of the year.
Its producer is the famous director, producer, and young filmmaker Karen Johar, who has directed the classic movies "My Name is Khan" and "Booming Heart", and has served as many high-profile films The production of the film is luxurious, and the cast is luxurious. There are not only veteran superstar Sanjay Dutt, dance god Madhuri Dexit, but also new generation idols Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhaha. As well as popular actors Aditya Loy Kapoor and Sonash Sinha, the budget for the entire film is as high as 1.37 billion rupees, which is definitely a big production in the Indian film industry.
At the same time, the plot sounds very tempting.
The story takes place in a northern town on the eve of the partition of India and Pakistan. Satya, the daughter-in-law of the wealthy businessman Chaudhry, is dying because of a terminal illness. She loves her husband Dev so much, and finds the daughter of a poor family, Rupp, as a sequel. Rupp was very reluctant, and on the wedding night, Dev's remarks that he only loved Satya made her resentful. While learning to sing with Mrs. Fanying, a famous prostitute, Rup got acquainted with Zafar, the illegitimate son of Chaudhry and Fanying, and gradually developed a relationship. Just when the six people were in the midst of extreme hardship, India and Pakistan were finally divided, and a riot started...
With a grand background of the times, real historical events, dramatic character relationships and emotional entanglements, this is completely an epic romantic drama!
But after watching it, Scarlet just wanted to say four words: It's too ugly!
Due to the twists and turns of the plot, almost every character in the story has experienced subtle emotional changes, and then made corresponding choices, but the film failed to describe this emotional change clearly.
For example, Zafar has always hated Chaudhry because of his illegitimate child status, so he deliberately approached Rupp and waited for an opportunity to retaliate, but he fell in love with Rupp unknowingly. In order not to hurt her, Zafar chose to leave. Here, how Zafar came up with the idea of taking revenge on Chaudhry through Rupp, how he gradually fell in love with Rupp, and how he gave up revenge because of this love, has not been laid out clearly, all rely on my brain and reasoning, otherwise I have no idea what Zafar is doing.
Besides, why did Rupp go to a famous courtesan to learn to sing? Did her feelings for Zafar also have a mentality of revenge against Dev at the beginning? Does Fanying hate Chaudhry? If you hate it, why stop Zafar from taking revenge, and if you don't hate it, why are you still indignant when you see Chaudhry? Zafar always wanted to take revenge, why did he change after seeing Dev, and finally gave up his little friend and stood in Dev's camp? There are so many missing descriptions of the inner emotional changes of various characters, so that the actions of the six major stars are inexplicable. I really rely on brain supplementation and reasoning (fortunately, the story is old-fashioned, it is not difficult to complete these), only understand this story.
The reasons for this situation are as follows:
1. The narrative efficiency is too low. Both Rupp and Zafar appeared in the form of singing and dancing. The two dances add up to ten minutes. After watching it, you don't know who they are? What background? what idea? All I know is that they're pretty lively...how can this work? As for Rupp's flashbacks, it's completely superfluous.
2, the story line is too complicated, there is no primary and secondary. I also want to describe the entanglement of Satya, Rupp and Dev, and the love triangle between Rupp, Dev and Zafar, and the old relationship between Chaudhry and Mrs Fanying, plus the background of the times. The partition of India and Pakistan... It was too full, but nothing was clearly stated, and it was messy! According to me, the character of Satya can be cut off directly, and Chaudhry and Mrs. Fanying will be greatly weakened. In the end, is it to describe the split between Dev and Zafar due to their life experience, feelings, and times (this shooting is equivalent to using the character relationship as a metaphor for the partition of India and Pakistan), or to portray Rupp in turbulent times and emotional disputes Involuntarily (it is a feminist story to shoot like this), it must also be prioritized.
3. The distribution of scenes is unreasonable. The six major stars are all too popular, and no one can have too few scenes. In the end, they almost operated under the thinking of "egalitarianism", which actually directly disrupted the pace of the story.
4. Excessive obsession with big scenes. In order to highlight the epic feel, the film invested a lot of money to create gorgeous scenes, so that the cart before the horse was turned upside down and the narrative was delayed. The most prominent is the frequent song and dance breaks, four songs and dances were inserted in the first hour! The story is cut into a bunch of beautiful pieces, and it also takes up precious moments.
Of course, I have to say that the picture of the film is really good-looking, beautiful, full of imagination, and full of traditional Indian cultural characteristics.
In particular, a solo dance by the dance god Madhuri, which continuously rotates rapidly for more than a minute, can maintain steady footsteps, graceful posture, and in-place expressions. It is really powerful, but unfortunately it failed to become an effective film text. .
After the film was released in India, the word of mouth was extremely poor, with an IMDb score of only 3.6.
One netizen even gave a one-star negative review, writing: "Don't watch this movie unless you want to punish yourself and sit for three hours of torture." The story is dull, boring, monotonous, old-fashioned, slow-paced, and pompous.
In the end, this big production with an all-star cast and an investment of 1.37 billion rupees only received 800 million rupees at the box office, which is a miserable loss.
This is also the first movie that the protagonist Varun Dhawan has made since his debut. In this regard, he also said, "The audience didn't accept the movie because it was really bad." However, Wan Lun emphasized that this is a "team project", and the director or producer should not be blamed alone, but also responsible.
As an Indian movie fan, I am quite disappointed. There are almost no good movies that can catch my eye this year. "Karank" has failed again. Next, I can only look forward to "Kabir Singh" and "Super 30".
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