notables, trifles and commonalities

{Jaani Dushman: volume III}

There are several idioms of Bollywood cinema that recur in the film. Rather than peppering the inevitable detailed synopsis with redundant information, it is probably best to summarise them up front (or back, depending on how you view your action of scrolling down a page).

* The incongruity of songs in Bollywood narrative has been duly noted over several years. Of late, this has become a postmodern exercise, lacking, in a majority of cases, a sense of irony and satire. This film lives up to the conventional expectations one would have of a mainstream commercial Hindi film: songs appear out of nowhere (literally) and punctuate the linear[sic] narrative (already ridden with a large homomorphous flashback) with spatio-temporal discontinuity and improvisation. Dream sequences hop across continents and reality extends her arms to accomodate European streets as backdrops for the good old Hindi song that expresses clichéd love in a clichéd way with unimaginative dance steps and cross-pollinated clothing

* Sanity and caution compete as they are thrown to the lions (who chose to ignore them as well) when characters in the film don and shed motivation, characteristics, behavioural patterns and morphological profiles at every instance of every frame -- a faux priest who embelishes his inadequate English with a strong North Indian accent functions as the principal (perhaps) of a generic college, a watchman at a ladies hostel, a professor of parapsychology, a medium, an occult quack, and a medallion peddler (a la Gene Roddenberry)