Movie review: Filmistaan

Filmistaan movie review : There are a few enjoyable moments

Originally posted by: shamil

mogli is that you??

I was wondering why there is no thread for this movie😆

looking forward to watching this one.

JS... 🤗

How did you know it's me? 😆

Promo of this movie seemed interesting.. Hope it's as good as Tere Bin Laden.

Filmistaan movie review; Cast: Sharib Hashmi, Innamulhaq; Writer-Director: Nitin Kakkar; Rating: ****

Hold this film tight. There is an utterly moving sequence towards the end of this lovely parable on cross-border amity where Sunny (Sharib Hashmi), who has strayed into Pakistan, confesses to Aftaab (Innamulhaq) that he is obsessed with Bollywood and wants to be a hero, though he knows he doesn't have it in him.

"Mera asli hero toh tu hi hai," Aftaab tells Sunny sincerely.

For me, that moment sums up the mood of this big-little film. Made at a shoestring budget by fringe talent, the film shows us that true heroes can be found in most unexpected places.

Try this hamlet in the back of the beyond in Pakistan where our Bollywood struggler is locked up by militants who actually wanted to kidnap Americans for ...errrm...negotiations.

And look what they dragged in!

"Filmistaan" would have been an outrageously funny film were it not for the profoundly moving underbelly that it secretes with such fluency and spontaneity. The film could have become a gallery of cliches about Indo-Pak harmony. A sort of Veer-Zara turned into a Veru and Zara-uddin who become friends in Pakistani soil while guns boom all around them.

Sachindra Vats edits the scenes down to the minimum when required. But generally he lets the characters develop naturally even if the process takes some time. The film is shot in authentic locations by cinematographer Subhransu Das who brings to the table an enticing aura of believability.

The dialogues written by the film's lead Sharib Hashmi never become top-heavy with message-mongering, nor does the going get excessively verbose as it did in the recent cross-border film "Kya Dilli Kya Lahore".

It's astonishing how director Nitin Kakkar averts all the corny cliches of brotherhood across the barbed wire. By simply using Bollywood as the binding factor between the two countries, Kakkar emerges with a plot that is high on emotions and low on tripe and homilies.

The two actors who play the Indian and Pakistani do the rest. So effortlessly do they express the oneness of a cultural kinship that we are left looking at two individuals who transcend borders to become two Every mans. Sharib Hashmi and Innamulhaq are striven by their sense of absolute abandon that comes only to artistes who have nothing to lose except their anonymity. They are phenomenally in character, not slipping up even once in their interactive zone.

Bollywood does the rest. There is a longish homage to Sooraj Barjatya's "Maine Pyar Kiya" where we see the whole Pakistani village glued to a community television set watching Salman Khan and Bhagyashree love story. Here, as in many similar scenes showing mutual Bollywood-inspired solidarity between the two warring nations, Kakkar constructs a case for cross-border friendship without tripping over in an emotional slush.

My favourite sequence shows the captured Indian protagonist sitting in solitude in a darkened room when the sound of Reshma's song "Ve main chori chori" wafts in. Sunny joins in with Lata Mangeshkar's "Yaara sili sili" which is the Indian avatar of the same tune.

An entire thesis can be written in the way the film utilizes Bollywood songs on the rich soundtrack brimming over with the sounds of two cultures peering anxiously but affectionately at one another.

The storytelling never pounds out a pro-Pakistani message merely to try to tilt the socio-political balance between the two countries.

"Filmistaan" is neither for nor against either country. It's blissfully pro-Bollywood. So what happens when a struggling assistant director from India bonds with a CD pirate of Bollywood films in Pakistan? We find out with the same thrill of discovery that the director feels as he lets the two protagonists sort out their differences.

This quirky charmer from first-time director Kakkar is fresh in vision and enchanting in execution. The only happy outcome of the cross-border divide is a heartwarming film such as this. As we often say about the Wagah border, this you gotta see.

Anupama Chopra @anupamachopra 4h

A weekend with two terrific films - #Filmistaan and #TheWorldBeforeHer. See both - this doesn't happen too often!

*

Aniruddha Guha @AniGuha 6h

I liked #Filmistaan in spite of the film never quite being able to hold the plot together. It could have been a much better film than it is.

Aniruddha Guha @AniGuha 6h

And while everyone's been raving about Sharib Hashmi in #Filmistaan (and he is good), Inaamulhaq's is the character that stayed with me.

Originally posted by: chimchimcher-ee

JS... 🤗

How did you know it's me? 😆

Promo of this movie seemed interesting.. Hope it's as good as Tere Bin Laden.

Very excited for this and The world before her. Too bad neither of the two films are playing at a screen in my locality.

'Filmistaan' review: It's a clever ode to popular Hindi cinema


Rajeev Masand,
CNN-IBN
Jun 06, 2014 at 11:11pm IST



Cast: Sharib Hashmi, Inaamulhaq

Director: Nitin Kakkar

The kidnapping of an aspiring Bollywood actor by Pakistani terrorists serves as a springboard for cheeky, bittersweet humor and a plea for cross-border brotherhood in first-time director Nitin Kakkar's 'Filmistaan'. Above all things, this is a clever ode to popular Hindi cinema whose fans, as Kakkar reminds us, exist everywhere.

It's a celebration of India's song-and-dance film culture and heightened emotions.

Sunny Arora (Sharib Hashmi) is what most people would call a ham artiste. He does crazy, exaggerated impressions of movie stars, and can rattle off the lines of just about any film. It doesn't help him get any acting jobs however. While working as an assistant director for an American film crew shooting a documentary in Rajasthan, a militant group mistakenly captures Sunny instead of the American they were hoping to get their hands on, and bring him to a small Pakistani border village as hostage.

It's here that the film hits its stride.

Sunny's indefatigable spirit and his contagious love for the movies keeps things light and breezy in an otherwise dire scenario. In one of the film's best scenes, he directs his own ransom video, and bosses around his captors insisting on multiple retakes. On another occasion he saves the day, and wins the affection of the locals, when a screening of 'Maine Pyar Kiya' is almost ruined by poor sound. He makes an unlikely friend in Aftab (Inaamulhaq), a pirate who sells bootlegged DVDs to his Bollywood-obsessed countrymen, and together they plot Sunny's escape.

It's the scenes between these two men that are most enjoyable in 'Filmistaan', and both actors do a good job of never turning their parts into caricatures. Hashmi, as the irrepressible Sunny, has terrific timing, and delivers a robust comic performance evocative of Roberto Benigni in 'Life is Beautiful'. But the film hits a snag in its final act when it slips into clichd political commentary. A track involving the two militants who'd been babysitting Sunny culminates in an unconvincing finish.

'Filmistaan' works best as a movie about the magic of movies. It's a celebration of India's song-and-dance film culture and heightened emotions... one that unites fans in their shared love for this unique art-form. For its sheer inventiveness and for some terrific comic moments, this film is worth a watch. I'm going with three out of five.

Rating: 3 / 5