Masaan Review: Love And Longing In Benaras

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Neeraj Ghaywan’s debut film Masaan won two awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and finds an early release across India. It’s an assured and mature debut, which remains with you long after you have left the cinema.

Two parallel stories run along the banks of Ganges river in the holy city of Benaras – one of a young girl entrapped by small-mindedness, corruption and tragedy and the other of a young man desperate to break the repressive shackles of the caste system.

Devi (Richa Chadda) becomes the hapless victim of moral policing when she is caught with a young man in a hotel room. In order to quash the potential humiliation, her scholar father (Sanjay Mishra), with a small time local enterprise, is forced to pay a debilitating bribe to a corrupt local cop. All the while Devi is plotting her escape from the constricting mentality of the small town.

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Not too far away, Deepak (Vicky Kaushal) dreams of bagging a lucrative job which will free him from the daily ignominy of being a member of the domcommunity, the lowest in the caste structure assigned with burning dead bodies on the banks of the river. Deepak’s optimism increases manifold when he meets the sweet upper caste Shaalu (Shweta Tripathi) who furthers his drive for breaking away.

Circumstances wreak havoc on both these young couples. And while we root for their redemption and escape, the script also glosses over issues of corruption, justice and loses an opportunity to spotlight the psychology of dealing with the stench of death day in and day out.

Mishra is rock solid and Kaushal makes an impressive debut. Chadda’s character mostly remains stoic and resolute. One misses a scene of breakdown and catharsis. You know Chadda is capable of delivering a great deal more. Tripathi is delightful as the innocent Shaalu while you wish there had been a greater role for the ever-reliable Pankaj Tripathi (as Devi’s colleague).

One of the stars of ‘Masaan’ is cinematographer Avinash Arun who brilliantly lenses and captures the lanes, ghats, waterways and eeriness of Benaras and its environs.

Obvious set-ups that offer predictable outcomes puncture Varun Grover’s screenplay. However one can overlook some of these as inexperience and credit Ghaywan and Grover for steering clear of melodrama, sermonizing and stereotypical exoticism to present a lyrical study of fettered modern society.

Rating: ***1/2

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