It needs a tough timber and texture
to face the agonies of life and ride out triumphant. Art is replete with heroic
tales. Distanced by history and denominated by Time, our heroes are tucked away
in the distant past, unvisited corridors and painted to be picture perfect.
This evolved over time – actually as old as the Shakespearean protagonists
(Othello,Macbeth,Kinglear…..) wronged yet resilient fighters, who survive fate.
Into that hall this Friday walks Kishan Mohan (Farhan Akhtar). His musical
dreams lie shattered when he is wrongly convicted for murder and finds himself
in jail.
Towns are small, dreams are not. He declares, only to see them they laid. After
a few amateur and abortive attempts to make it big Kishan lands from the
streets of Moradabad to Lucknow Central – A high security prison. Since our guy
cannot get over rock on, he is now a willing pawn to build a ‘Jail band’. He
overcomes prison feuds and recruits Parminder (Jippy Gerewal), Dictor (Deepak
Dobriyal), Purshottam (Rajesh Sharma) and Dikkat (Innamul Haq).
For Kishan the stated plan is escape, the dream is to establish a band.
Stalking him is the hard nut jailor Shrivastav (Ronit Roy) who smells a rat.
Social activist Gayatri (Diana Penty)pushes for jail reform and reformative
therapeutics. The stern conspiratorial plans misfire at the instance of Chief
Minister (Ravi Kishen). Now this is heading to Pappillion meets Sound of Music.
At all times the jail break thriller is a musical! Alternately the rock band
musical is a thriller .
With life when things go bad they get worse. In the 2 hour plus script the
narrative runs a parallel between the dreamer and his music band the convicts
on the escape plan. Caught inextricably in a dilemma he joins the roadmap to
escape but may have to stay back to realise his dream.
He poetically states the dilemma once; ‘we all commit the crime of dreams some
are called to pay tax’ he also realises for the band ‘tuntuna nahi bandey
chahieyay’. How he settles the dilemma constitutes a long drawn buy reasonably
well executed finale.
Farhan Akhtar – Forget the art knows the craft perfectly. He fights hard and
successfully to overcome his urbane style to be the struggler from Moradabad.
He along side the likes of Deepak Dobriyal supply heart tugging moments that
enriches the film in fact the entire cast including the very pleasant. Diana
Penty give the film the right weight of flesh. When you cast actors, not stars
the narrative garners credibility. Lucknow Central is one jail visit which is
worth the while if you empathise or dare to dream.
L. Ravichander.