When it comes to Imtiaz Ali’s Main Vaapas Aaunga (MVA), let me say this: I get it, I really do… hence the disappointment.
A little backstory for context: I’ve spent years in India being loved by grandparents and great-grandparents, felt the pain and tears in unrelentingly long hugs of separation and braved the heartbreak of not being there when sickness and death came to them.
In Pakistan, I’ve seen both parents suffer debilitating illnesses, one from rapidly advancing dementia. So, in every sense, I am Imtiaz Ali’s main audience. MVA, therefore, should have broken this writer. Only, it made me reach for the fast-forward button. A.R. Rahman’s soundtrack didn’t help either.
Ali, the co-writer and director, is immovably stuck in his own circle of thought. His films are still about journeys, as he told Icon and this writer in 2015. Unlike his earlier work, this film is chock-a-block with superficial emotion, feigned sensitivity and an irksome flatness that one cannot merely blame on Sylvester Fonseca’s flatter cinematography.
Imtiaz Ali’s Main Vaapas Aaunga reaches for a bittersweet tale of love, loss and Partition, but its emotional journey never quite lives up to its destination
