Finished watching Gangubai finally.
Definitely a career defining role for Alia and she nailed it. Bhansali makes a lot of grandiose films where his heroines are shown with swords or guns but mostly end up just being cosmetic ornaments....lol.....but this whole movie revolves around Gangubai orchestrating things so in that sense Alia lucked out way more than Bhansali's other muses whose main job is to just look pretty and dance while politics swirl around them😆.
I think it really helped the film that the plot was all centralized in one location of those lanes of Kamathipura.....unlike other recent SLB films that tried to cover a variety of locations/backdrops.....here you are just consumed by the world of Kamathipura - the trials, tribulations, the politics all centralized and it helps anchor the narrative better.
Bhansali can dress up a lot of things in his films with grand costumes, makeup, songs etc....but if you don't have the raw material in you, it will show.....Alia was dismissed so much as baby-faced when this movie was announced but she shows her power as an actor at multiple points in the film - of particular note are the Azad Maidaan speech she gives and her confrontations with Razia bai....she was quite good in her scenes with Ajay Devgan's character too - very effective use of a cameo there by Bhansali. All of the supporting cast was well used - made their impact in barely 1-2 scenes also. Who would have guessed that baby-faced Alia ends up being believable as a matriarchal figure in this story too with the way she's shown caring for the women of her brothel as well as their children. Shantanu did quite well in his role too with that tragic brief romance he gets with Gangu.
I guess what I liked was that after a long time I saw a Bhansali movie that had a tight narrative...it wasn't meandering around or abruptly jumping narrative wise in a jerky manner.
Thank you so much for the review yaar..am so pumped I so want to watch and hearing only and only good things and now it has your seal of approval too toh m even more excited 🥳
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