-Nimish Inamdar.
29th Jan 2005.
Relax on couch, sip a cup of tea, and unfold the newspaper to begin the morning routine. Page one, general national or international news, page two, metro news, then you proceed to page 3. After the black and white or gray flavor of first two pages, Page 3 welcomes glitter, glamour, colors, etc. It represents the lights of the city that burned the whole night when you lay on your bed in preferred silence and darkness. And Madhur Bhandarkar’s new endeavor Page 3 represents the darkness behind these lights.
Madhur has managed to prepare a relishing bhel-puri of many celeb-stories, to make a delicacy good enough to sit back and enjoy. It involves a heavy industrialist with a spoilt daughter and a worried wife who commits suicide after knowledge about her husband’s involvement in child abuse and molestation. The story involves, an on-duty ACP, who prefers to be among the party animals even when the city is under the threats of riots and bomb-blasts. It also includes struggling actress Gayatri (Tara Sharma) going through a phase of casting couch. The story doesn’t even spare male section from casting couches, but this time they are forced to homosexuality in an attempt to get roles.
The script allows a practical Sandhya Mridul in the character of Pearl who gets married off to a millionaire more than twice as much her age. But amongst these we also see a socialite played by Suhasini Muley who will actually prefer to work for people. Then we get to see an honest police inspector Limaye in the character of Inspector Bhonsle who pays for his honesty. The camera moves over many other areas where drivers chat, where gatecrashers enter or where a person struggling to appear in page 3, finally achieves his goal. The film above all includes Atul Kulkarni in the character of Vinayak Mane, a crime reporter who mocks at Konkona Sen, differentiating between journalism and entertainment.
We get to see all this from the eyes of Konkona Sen, a journalist for the newspaper Nation Today, who tucks down her parents’ wish and travels all the way from Banglore to Mumbai for her dream in journalism. But after watching the plastic life of these celebrities, she decides to change her beat to crime. Her boss, Deepak Suri (played by Boman Irani) being very cooperative, allows her to work under Atul Kulkarni. All the while she breaks up with her boy friend, her roommates, Pearl and Gayatri desert her due to their own paths and problems, leaving her quite alone.
Over this Nation Today fires her for making a story on the child abuse by the noted industrialist. Boman her boss who actually appreciates her story and her work, bends to the upper orders and does the proceedings for firing her. The whole world around her is plastic, artificial and completely unwanted. In this Atul Kulkarni stands by her and his words, “To change the system, you have to be in the system” encourages her to take up the same category job but in another press. This is where the glamour, glitter and the monotonous life welcome her back again.
Where do we find a relishing Bhel-Puri in this pathetic life? There lies the genius of Madhur Bhandarkar. He has created good humour when at the same time ridiculing the life of these stars. The film has managed very good casting. Atul Kulkarni although with a very small role has handled it all very well. Konkana Sen is undoubtedly good, same to Boman, Sandhya, Tara, Bikram and many others.
The world is a stage where we land and perform. But every world has a subset in it, and thus we get to perform and as well watch others perform on this stage. After the film I feel that it should be better to watch others perform rather than actually performing on this stage where there is a craze to rush on the third page.
Rating: * * * *
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