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Tuesday, 16 June 2020

Gulabo Sitabo

Movie Review (Hindi)

I have grown to enjoy all the movies that Amitabh Bachchan has acted in lately, meaning as an older man rather than the angry action hero. I am also a huge follower of Ayushmann Khurrana's movies. And when both are present in the same movie, of course I do not give it a miss!

So I had to watch Gulabo Sitabo and as expected it was an amazingly well made engrossing movie. 

The protagonists, Mirza and Baanke, played by Amitabh Bachchan and Ayushmann respectively, have a lot of competition for screen space. Not only with the other characters but with the huge Haveli, known as Fatima Haveli, located in the old part of Lucknow, the sprawling palatial home of his wife, which  Mirza wants to own more than anything else.

With Juhi Chaturvedi as the screenplay writer and Soojit Sarkar directing, there were bound to be some takeaways. So lawyers, builders and archeologists (this was a first!) descended on the haveli owner (by proxy) and the tenants, and it was holy mayhem! 

What also stood out for me was the woman power. Be it Begum, the owner of Fatima Mahal, played by Farrukh Jaffar, or Guddo, Baanke's sister, played by Srishti Srivastava.
The cinematography beautifully brought the crumbling Fatima Mahal to life with the lives of the tenants and landlord intertwining and playing out in different ways.

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