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Shab
Critic reviews and ratings
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Erratic in engaging and evoking empathy. Could be watched for its director and theme.
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The maturity and the subtlety with which Onir tackles the themes of Shab make it worth a watch.
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...is a courageous film and not only on account of its theme. It dares to go against the grain of what is passes for 'well-made' cinema in the Bollywood playbook. It is stylish, layered, evocative and not averse to embracing subtle obliqueness.
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Onir’s expertise is seen in the way he handles these characters and their stories - his sensible filmmaking is written all over the frames.
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The writing also lacks finesse in certain scenes and feels disjointed or incomplete. There is a cloud of a Madhur Bhandarkar film like Page 3 or Fashion that looms large over the second half of Shab.
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An avoidable and disappointing affair, especially if you hold an expectation of a typical Onir film.
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...Onir documents the most intimate facets of his characters lives with confounding distance. Blame it on the sloppy screenplay and flimsy characterisation, but not a single character elicits any sort of emotional response -- good or bad.
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...should have augmented Onir’s oeuvre. Perhaps being based on a script written over a decade ago contributed to the feeling of datedness.
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We need filmmakers like him to have conversations about subjects like same-sex relationships, single mothers, but he needs to have his objective clear.
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The filmmaker embellishes Shab with generous dollops of mainstream Bollywood grammar, while you keep wishing he breaks free and implements a restrained approach, like with his earlier works. But what you end up with instead is a farrago of unrealised ideas, where no particular story shines through.
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...seems to want to make a grand statement about ambition, migration, exploitation and sexuality, but its scope is limited by the stodgy dialogue, the mostly poor acting (Raveena Tandon has her moments) and incredible levels of contrivance.
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Onir recently argued that he doesn't fancy himself as an indie filmmaker but a commercial one. And that his 'treatment' lends his films to be deemed otherwise. But here, he stereotypes homosexuals, sex workers and everyone in between.
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It’s hard to get involved with any of these lives, as their problems are so generic (though Onir could claim, rightly, that the generic is the universal). Something’s off. The revelations are underwhelming, and, worse, unaffecting.
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Restraint cannot mean zero vitality, yet that is what you get in Shab. Worse, the film does not have anything new to say.
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