‘The Good Road’ — A decent film & a giant leap for Gujarati Cinema, scrutinized with the wrong…
A group named ‘Apna Adda’ that I am an active member of screened Director Gyan Correa’s ‘The Good Road’ in Ahmedabad. The response was…
Source — Glamsham
A group named ‘Apna Adda’ that I am an active member of screened Director Gyan Correa’s ‘The Good Road’ in Ahmedabad. The response was unprecedented and over 70 excited viewers turned up just via Facebook publicity. The reason: TGR being nominated as India’s official entry for the ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ in The Oscars. Comparisons to ‘The Lunchbox’ were drawn too. And the nuisance that had been caused by certain elements of Gujarati Society after this film’s rise to popularity was also at the back of some viewers’ minds.
It would be inappropriate to scrutinize this film purely on the basis of its Oscar nomination and in all fairness, this film would have gathered a lot more appreciation had it not been looked at through that lens. TGR features three stories interwoven into one another, their only commonality being that all of them occur and evolve on a road. One story looks at a couple who loses their child and engage in a frantic search, the second talks of a poor, orphaned girl child who gets pushed towards prostitution and the third is of a poor truck driver and his helper who are barely managing to get through and are pushed to resort to crime for sustaining themselves. Although each story is completely different from each other, there are crucial junctures when they overlap with one another.
TGR possesses a unique mix of seasoned actors such as Sonali Kulkarni and Ajay Gehi along with real people. For example, the Actor who plays the Truck driver is actually a truck driver in real life and was trained specifically for this role. This unique casting creates an interesting scenario where the rawness and honesty of their acting is visible on the one hand, however on the other hand their lack of familiarity with the craft and them being conscious of the camera spoils very important moments in the film. One of the film’s biggest failures is its inability to establish any emotional connect with its viewers, especially in the first half. The happenings that unfold feel aloof and strange, however the second half is drastically better and connects a lot of dots that left you confused in the first half.
Another feature of the movie is the Director’s conscious emphasis on keeping each situation and character as less emotive as possible. Nothing is on your face and feels unusually un-Bollywood like. A trait that is not necessarily bad, this can often work to the favour of a film as real life is way less dramatic than reel life. However there are situations in this film where it feels a little farcical, such as when the parents lose their child and yet appear hardly perturbed or when a major accident is caused by a truck driver and he drives away so casually as if nothing ever happened.
Despite not being a film you would look forward to seeing a second time, the film does feel very real and should be commended for being a major leap for regional Cinema, especially for Gujarati cinema.
Did I enjoy seeing ‘The Lunchbox’ more than ‘The Good Road’? Definitely. Would the former have had a better chance of winning an Oscar? Maybe, maybe not. But then why was there ever a need of comparing the latter to the former? Simply because both were contenders in the Oscar race, along with films such as ‘Ship of Theseus’ and ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’. One could argue that there is no need at all of lusting to win the Oscars. We have brilliant films that are made in India and the approval of the Oscars is not needed to certify how good they are!
However, one cannot ignore the fact that ‘The Good Road’ was the unanimous choice of the selection committee and it was their decision to make. Watch this one if you are looking for different kind of regional cinema, not if you want to judge it for its Oscar connection!
2.5/5