Dor - A Review

Direction: Nagesh Kukunoor
Cast: Ayasha Takia, Shreyas talpade, Gul Panag, Girish Karnad

In this case, Dor means a thread that binds or weaves lives together, depending on how the Master Weaver uses it. The film portrays the entanglement of the lives of two unsuspecting women living in two distant parts of India. Zeenath (Gul Panag) in Himachal, is the independent survivor whom life has taught to stand up for what she wants. Meera (Ayesha Takia) in Rajasthan has unquestioningly followed tradition as dictated by her upbringing and in-laws. Both their husbands leave them soon after marriage to go and work in Saudi Arabia. As life would have it, Meera’s Shankar and Zeenath’s Amir share a room there. When Shankar dies suddenly, Amir is accused of being his murderer.

A gray-faced Delhi bureaucrat descends on Zeenath and her in-laws, bearing the painful news and also explaining that by Saudi law, Amir will be executed if Shankar’s widow does not sign his pardon.

Zeenath will not fold up or give in and embarks a seemingly impossible quest to find a stranger and get the vital pardon.

In colourful Rajasthan, a rather endearing “beharoopiya” comes by chance into Zeenath’s life and joins the search. Shreyas Talpade of “Iqbal” fame, once again demonstrates his formidable talents in this quick-change artist cum conman role. Beautifully picturised scenes of the harsh realities of widowhood and the blame game that strangles them are relieved by some really fine episodes of comic relief, especially with the beharoopiya’s superb imitations of well known Bollywood actors and a certain nasal-voiced singer. His drunken “I luv you” scene is also played to perfection.

Gul Panag thankfully, does not show any traces of her “Miss India” background but has a limited range of expressions and often looks stiff. At times, her concentrated commitment gets a bit monotonous. The surprise package is Ayesha Takia who has done an excellent job with this opportunity. Her Meera swings from innocence and tragic uncertainty to a realization of what self-esteem and courage could bring into her arid widowhood. That very young but husky voice is one of her main tools of expression and effective dialogue delivery.

Will both these women, bound unexpectedly together by the thread of life, succeed in creating the patterns that they want? Will Zeenath manage to save Amir’s life. Will Meera actually leap across the deep and frightening chasm that divides her old self from the new one that she learns to hope for? Will she be able to break the old “Dor” of negative traditions that bind her down to a life of living oblivion? Go see the movie and find out!!

Nagesh Kukunoor steers the story with a deft touch that avoids clichéd or contrived twists. He appears before the camera too, briefly this time. There is just enough of the local dialect in the dialogue to enhance the traditional settings without making it unintelligible to a national audience. The “Padharo Maare Des” background score is good without being intrusive or distracting. A must-see movie that comes like a huge gust of oxygen after the stultifying big budget, big star cast, big costume drama (and ultimately old-wine-in-tired-new-bottle) movies that are routinely churned out by the Bombay film industry. I am sure a lot of people out there are truly grateful to Nagesh Kukunoor for his ability to marry reality to entertainment so skillfully. More power to him.