Gulmohar movie review: Words, words, just too many words

When Gulmohar opens, the Batras are gathered in a well-appointed hall of their posh Delhi villa. This is the sort of place filled with the works of famous artists and people turned out in expensive clothes, where you might expect to meet Sharmila Tagore in reality. And there she is, dripping elegance in her silk sari, pearls and carefully styled silver hair. It takes a moment to recall that the woman we are watching here is not the iconic actor but Kusum Batra nee Roy, her character in this film, matriarch of the extended Batra clan. Accompanied by the tinkling of glasses and laughter, and Talat Aziz ’s singing – not a recording, but the real Talat, playing Kusum’s friend Avinash – we learn that these are the family’s last few days in this, their long-time home. Kusum speaks up: Holi is just a few days away, and she wants to celebrate the festival with them in this house one last time before they finally shift out. Kusum’s son Arun ( Manoj Bajpayee ) and his wife Indira (Simran) protest at the last-minute disruption of their plans. Their objections to this development recede into the background though when Kusum drops a bomb on them: she is moving to Puducherry. So, the ground is set for _Gulmohar_ , written by Arpita Mukherjee and Rahul V. Chittella, and directed by the latter who is also a long-time associate of Mira Nair. Sharing space in the story with Kusum, Arun and Indira are the couple’s children – Aditya (Suraj Sharma) who is struggling with a start-up that he does not want his rich father to finance and Amrita (Utsavi Jha), a singer-songwriter – and their respective partners, the live-in domestic help Reshma Saeed (Santhy Balachandran from Jallikattu ), the security guard (Jatin Goswami), a crotchety, prejudiced uncle (Amol Palekar) and his son (Anuraag Arora) among others. In its opening half hour, Gulmohar is enticing with its quiet refinement, lilting score and appropriately languorous pace. A Delhi in which even the wealthy are selling off their bungalows to builders who are replacing them with high-rise apartment complexes, family politics, adoption, generational differences in the approach to the LGBT+ community, class, inter-community relationships, Islamophobia, independence vs practical considerations for a child of privilege – a lot is packed into the narrative without crowding it because the director adopts a storytelling style that mirrors the rhythms of life. Certain conversational motifs that set in early sound artificial, but they are initially cast in the shade by the more natural sounding lines, nostalgia for Sharmila Tagore who is on screen after a long time, the joy of watching the legend team up with Manoj Bajpayee and another legend, Amol Palekar, in a cameo, and the pleasure of seeing Tamil star Simran return to Hindi cinema in a role worthy of her stature and charisma. Soon though, conversations give way to incessant philosophising and characters start dispensing wisdom to each other in a manner that is less like regular humans conversing than actors doing their utmost with dialogues written for them. The conversational motifs mentioned in the previous paragraph become too persistent to be excused. “Haan ki na (yes or no)?” Arun and Indira ask each other at various points in the film, without explaining the subject of the question. The expected answer is “haan, always”, presumably indicating the depth of understanding between them. It sounds contrived. So does Kusum’s repeated “it was meant to be” … “it was not meant to be.” The writers also seem not to have been struck by the contradiction between the fatalism in Kusum’s advice to a younger person that “sometimes you should let life write its own story” and Aditya’s wife exhorting him to grab life by the collar. Both are delivered as definitive  lessons. There is a stage at which the narrative cuts from talk to music to talk to music to talk to music so unrelentingly that I began longing for both to be given a rest so that the film could just sit in silence and breathe. Some of Gulmohar’s conflicts and their resolution also do not quite work. A long-lost relative being discovered in a completely different city feels too far-fetched. And there is no progression towards the shocking actions of a dead relative – the script makes little effort to acquaint us with that dead person, thus vastly subtracting from the effect of that extremely crucial episode. This downhill slide is unfortunate because in many ways that go beyond just its casting coup, Gulmohar is important. It’s been a while since a Hindi film has captured Delhi beyond its most famous architectural landmarks to get the essence of this changing city. For a senior star as iconic as Sharmila to be part of a film that is non-judgmental towards homosexuality and embraces differences in the way Gulmohar does is also a milestone for LGBT+ representation in Hindi cinema, no less significant than when director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury got Amitabh Bachchan to play a character who said “no means no” in Pink in the context of consent in sexual relationships. Sharmila Tagore’s magnificent screen presence and loveable character in Gulmohar overshadow her slightly laboured dialogue delivery. Manoj Bajpayee delivers a perfectly pitched interpretation of inner conflict and insecurity, as does Simran tightrope walking between Indira’s constant frustration and empathy. The two also have a pleasant chemistry going between them. One of my favourite scenes in Gulmohar involves Arun and Indira in the middle of an argument in a hotel room when she is about to fling an object on the floor in anger – a glint enters his eyes even in the middle of his distress as he cautions her not to do so since the hotel will charge them for it. The rest of the cast are impactful to varying degrees, the best of them being the wonderful Anuraag Arora (Delhi Crime) whose anguish at a turning point in the plot is so real, and Kaveri Seth as Aditya’s wife. Suraj Sharma (Life of Pi, The Illegal ) does not get the sort of expansive central role here with which he has established his credentials so far, but the sensitivity he summons up to play Aditya exemplifies what this young actor is capable of. What works in Gulmohar works very well. The film has its heart in the right place as it addresses multiple issues including some that Hindi cinema does not bother with. I really wanted to like it, but the script is too self-conscious about its sagacity and exhaustingly verbose. Gulmohar is streaming on Disney+Hotstar

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.