Cast : Ranvir Shorey, Brijendra Kala, Neha Dhupia, Naseeruddin Shah
Director: Rajat Kapoor
Drama unfolds
Mithya (A lie) has so many stratums; viewer is unlikely to be bored. Much like Superstar, co-release film, Mithya too revolves around the life of a struggling Bollywood actor.
Ranvir Shorey plays VK, the struggler in question, whose life turns upside down when he gets unintentionally involved with the underworld owing to the striking resemblance he bears to a person they have grudge. I can reveal as little as that about this film’s plot without spoiling profusely.
Mithya is one of those rare films that constantly surprise you; it’s one of those films that never stops unraveling, a film that never reveals all its cards at once. Unpredictability, surprise, the unfamiliar film is Mithya In fact, it’s got more surprises. It has humor yet tragic.
Starting off as a comedy, Mithya span several genres as it makes it way from start to finish — thriller, romance, suspense — but eventually it settles comfortably into its identity as a black comedy as Rajat projected it to be darker than his previous films.
Working on a nifty screenplay, director Rajat Kapoor delivers a refreshingly complex offering — a film about an ordinary man in a bizarre situation, but all the while it remains a story that’s entirely believable because the characters are so real and the situations so cleverly constructed. Sure you complain about the absence of humor in the film’s second half, and it’s true the film seems much longer than its running time, but those are just small hitches in an otherwise enormously appealing film. Much of the credit for realizing the director’s vision must go to the ensemble cast, possibly the best assembled for a Hindi film in recent months.
Ranvir Shorey, in a performance that merits an impromptu acclaim, goes from funny to heart-breaking, to confused, to adorable in a matter of minutes. Never once going over-the-top, in fact staying firmly in character even as the film takes many twists and turns, Ranvir makes your heart go out to VK. The year has only just begun, but we can say this is easily one of finest performances by a leading actor in 2008. More seldom is the supporting cast delivering such consistent performances that it’s difficult to pick one over the other in the order of merit — a loud round of applause for the Supporting cast Vinay Pathak, Brijendra Kala, Harsh Chhaya, Neha Dhupia, Iravati Harshe, Saurabh Shukla and Naseeruddin Shah who shine in their roles.
Mithya is a brave, mature effort by a perceptive director. This is a film with so many layers and you’re unlikely to be bored. Normally we complain that Hindi films are mindless and predictable, thanks to Rajat Kapoor, here comes a film that attends to it.
