Kedarnath

The Hindu-Muslim romance gets a Titanic-style outing in Abhishek Kapoor's fifth movie. In James Cameron's global blockbuster from 1997, the class barrier that separated the leads proved insignificant in the face of the sinking of the luxury ship. Kedarnath adds to class differences to the iceberg of religion: Mansoor (Sushant Singh Rajput) loses his heart to Mandakini (Sara Ali Khan), the daughter of an influential Hindu priest.

Kedarnath is based on the 2013 Uttarakhand floods, but it is more concerned with the humanity of its storytelling than the humans of the story. Multiple motifs jostle for space in a busy script: religion (the Hindu-Pandit-Muslim-porter tension), class (poor-rich conflict), economics (pilgrimage/tourist season), commercialization (the imminent displacement of traditional shops for modern hotels), generational discord (parents/fiancs are the villains) and of course, gender subversion (girl is the risk-taker and move-maker). One can't entirely blame the filmmakers, though.

Writer-director Abhishek Kapoor's Kedarnath carries a heavy burden. In a short span of just 121 minutes, the film tries to do a lot many things. For starters, it is the launch film of a star bachcha Sara Ali Khan - the biological daughter of Amrita Singh and Saif Ali Khan, and quite obviously one who has been groomed and nurtured for stardom-cum-divadom by Kareena Kapoor Khan.

Meet Mandakini (Sara Ali Khan). She, like countless other Bollywood heroines that have preceded her in last 15 years, is loquacious, spirited and stubborn. She is a rebel with a cause; tired of rampant construction around Kedarnath she steals hoardings of hotels even though her Hindu priest father is in hospitality business too.

Mansoor Khan (Sushant Ali Khan) is a pitthoo in Kedarnath who ports the visitors on his back helping them to cover the trekking distance and reach the temple. Mandakani Mishra aka Mukku (Sara Ali Khan) is the daughter of a wealthy priest who also owns some hotels in that area. They both are fond of cricket & that helps them to get so close to each other so they kiss in a cave.

KEDARNATH is a love story that takes place right before a natural catastrophe. Mansoor (Sushant Singh Rajput) is a 'pitthoo' aka porter who carries pilgrims to the holy Hindu town of Kedarnath from the base. His Muslim identity doesn't come in the way of fulfilling his duty and believing in the faith in Kedarnath. Another resident of Kedarnath is Mandakini aka Mukku (Sara Ali Khan). Her father Briraaj (Nitish Bharadwaj) is a priest and he owns a lodge and a shop on the way to the temple.

One Word Review... Kedarnath: DULL. Unconvincing love story... Sketchy and unexciting screenwriting... Few moments [sequences depicting the floods] stand out... Emotions are superficial... Sara Ali Khan makes a terrific debut... Sushant is ordinary...

A pilgrimage to Kedarnath in June, 2013, turned out to be the last trip for thousands of people. One of the most devastating disasters of this decade left the world stunned and buried in immeasurable grief. Director Abhishek Kapoor (Rock On, Kai Po Che) chooses this historic catastrophe as the background of his latest film Kedarnath, and immediately faces the most obvious challenge-how to believably recreate the natural calamity in its entirety?

Abhishek Kapoor's Kedarnath is important on three levels. Foremost, it is the launch vehicle of an extraordinarily-talented star kid. And the filmmaker does full justice to her. As the protagonist, every line in the script supports her. In turn, Sara Ali Khan shines. It is hard to believe that this is her first film because she is so spectacular. Her looks and her dialogue delivery have you rooting for her. And when she is not on screen, it seems like the sun is hiding behind the clouds.

This is the perfect week to watch an inter-faith love story. It is the week a mob destroyed a masjid, and changed the face of India, making it the country we live in today. Divided, polarized, simmering. Love in the time of hate is the only way to smash prejudice, and what better than a film holding it out as a possibility?

Kedarnath starts off with the promise of being a modern, hypnotic celebration of religion, but quickly gets down to separating individual faith and belief from organised religion. So, a Muslim pitthu (porter) Mansoor (Sushant Singh Rajput), who transports pilgrims and their luggage to and from Kedarnath, can have a deep connect with Mahadev despite saying his namaaz every day.

In a bid to spite her disapproving father, a defiant Madhuri Dixit stabs a broken wine bottle into her arm and vows to meet her beau come what may. Hysteria abounds, but Madhuri's impetuous intensity in Dil makes it work. When Sara Ali Khan slits her finger to prove a point to her bigot daddy in Kedarnath, she exhibits the same degree of ridiculous, romanticised rebellion that turns young ladies of Bollywood love stories into enthusiastic endorsers of self-inflicted violence.

Children born to fame often derive their identity from famous parents, but Hindi cinema spells out star-kid connections in truly warped fashion. For Sonakshi Sinha's debut film, Dabanng, her hero Salman Khan told me he had decided to style his on-screen moustache on her father Shatrughan Sinha's famous whiskers, surely an incredibly awkward creative call.

The disaster that strikes the eponymous Himalayan town and an interfaith couple in Abhishek Kapoor's Kedarnath does not spare the film either. The natural calamity turns it into a CGI-driven mess that washes away any prospect of this ambitious effort assuming the proportions of an epic drama.

Mandakini aka Mukku (Sara Ali Khan) is a feisty, young girl living in Kedarnath with her family. Her father (Nitish Bharadwaj) is a local priest and things get complicated when Mukku falls in love with a muslim boy and local pithoo (human porter) Mansoor (Sushant Singh Rajput). While the inter-faith romance between characters of different faith forms the core of the story, no one anticipates the other life-changing event, that is about to take this holy place by storm.