The Good Road review: More a meander than a highway

Somewhere in the middle of The Good Road, a truck driver’s assistant grumbles that if you pile 10 tons on a truck that’s meant to carry a six-ton load, then it’s bound to topple. This is effectively what is happening to The Good Road. Seen only as a debut film, rather than one bearing the weight of representing the nation and the stigma of having left people like Anurag Kashyap and Karan Johar heartbroken, The Good Road is inoffensive and has its moments. [caption id=“attachment_1130735” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] A still from The Good Road.[/caption] The film is about a group of people who are wandering around State Highway 378 in Gujarat, near the Rann of Kutch. Pappu, a truck driver, has been given a job that isn’t entirely legal. A little girl named Poonam is trying to reach her grandmother, but she loses her way. Starved and exhausted, she wanders into a brothel. Seven-year-old Aditya gets separated from his parents by chance and lands up in Pappu’s truck while his parents desperately try to locate him. All this happens within the course of one day. As large as your television screen might be, if you’re watching a DVD (as I did), you’re probably missing a lot of the beauty of the film’s cinematography. Still, there are some striking sequences, like the one in which underage prostitutes are put on display at the brothel, and the unforgiving countryside in the depths of Kutch has been shot well. The true star of the film, however, is Shamjibhai Kerasia who plays Pappu and is a truck driver in real life. He’s initially a little awkward, but every movement of his, whether at the wheel or climbing into the truck or paying for his chai, is so fluid and familiar that it’s difficult to imagine an actor replicating this. Kerasia doesn’t say much and eventually his weathered face and darting eyes prove to be sharply expressive. Through a mask of impassiveness, he communicates anger, anxiety, mulishness, affection and helplessness subtly but unmistakably. Unfortunately, the strengths of The Good Road aren’t enough to counterbalance the weaknesses in the storytelling and the uninspiring acting of professionals like Sonali Kulkarni and Ajay Gehl. The film relies on the cuteness of the child actors to make us feel for them, rather than establishing their distinctive personalities. The minor characters are hastily-etched and performed awkwardly by the non-actors who comprise the bulk of the cast. There are too many gaps in the chain of logic for each of the stories and the pacing of the film is such that a mere 92-minute film feels long. The Good Road struggles to hold a viewer’s attention. It lacks tension and the flatness in the writing emasculates the dangers and threats faced by the characters so that you never feel like time is running out for anyone. Aside from Pappu, no one feels real. Every now and then, there are moments that swerve away from the film’s realistic tone, like the shots of colourful, fluttering dupattas at the brothel or Sonali Kulkarni lying on the sun-hardened Rann of Kutch. They’re pretty, but inexplicably dreamy for a film that seems to want to emphasise realism. After all, what would possess any sane person to lie out in the open, directly under the harsh Kutchi sun, on a salt marsh, when you could sit inside your air-conditioned car? (Ans: Orders from a director and cinematographer who know that a mother’s despair is more photogenic when she’s a spot of colour in the bleached, sun-hardened whiteness, than when she’s in a jeep in said landscape.) The most discordant sequence in the film is when, in the middle of the film, while walking on the highway, little Aditya starts prancing around while singing “Chhodo kal ki baatein, kal ki baat purani”. Ironically, the film felt far more hopeful until this laboured statement of optimism. The problem that The Good Road faced when it first released was that virtually no one noticed it, even though it won the National Award for Best Gujarati Film in 2012. The film’s problem now that it has been selected as India’s entry for the Best Foreign Film at The Oscars is that everyone is going to compare it to The Lunchbox. Though, let us not forget, The Lunchbox wasn’t the only film in the running. According to filmmaker Gautam Ghose, the chairman of the jury that chose India’s Oscar hopeful, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Ship of Theseus, Shabdo and Viswaroopam were strong contenders. Let us now take a moment to say a prayer of thanks that India has been spared the embarrassment of Viswaroopam — in which Kamal Haasan saved the world with the help of kathak and a microwave; and Rahul Bose played a character seemingly inspired by Mullah Omar, who plotted a nuclear attack on America using, wait for it, pigeons — being sent to The Oscars.