"Dor" (Language - Hindi) (2006) - Movie Review

She slowly walks in the desolated streets of a village in Rajasthan. Her face is covered with the traditional outfit. Her eyes reflect the sorrow surmounting due to loss of her husband couple of months back. She hears a song and remembers that she used to entertain her husband by dancing for it. She does not weep in sorrow of the remembrance but dances the same steps what she did for her husband. The only difference though is that she is doing it for herself. This is Meera (Ayisha Takia) who immediately feels the tinge of guilt for expressing herself. And Zeenat (Gul Panag) enlightens her with the point of living for yourself and not worrying about what the minds of other people rant about. Director Nagesh Kukunoor brings in his flavour of right dialogues into a story involving misery of one woman and another woman fighting to avoid it. The story is inspired by a Malayalam movie “Perumazhakkalam”, directed by Kamal.

Zeenat and Meera are from different parts of India. Zeenat is a courageous and principled young woman and Meera is the victim of conservative and strict sociological environment. Both have sacrificed their pleasure by letting their husbands go to Saudi for good jobs. Tragedy strikes when Meera’s husband Shankar (Anirudh Jaykar) is said to be murdered by Amir (Rushad Rana), Zeenat’s husband. Through the government executive it is learnt that if Meera can sign on a paper forgiving Amir, his life will be spared from capital punishment. The executive says that Amir informed him that it was an accident. The film is not about the investigation of the incident but the “String” (Dor) attaching these two women. Zeenat decides to find Meera but unfortunately has nothing but a photo of Amir and Shankar in a room. She gets the help of a conman (Shreyas Talpade) and they go hunting for Meera. Meera is in the remote village being kept literally as a prisoner since there are still lots of places who treat widows as someone who should mourn for rest of their lives.

The initial part of the movie slowly moves ahead with the expectation of something definitely bad is going to happen. The plot of one’s life struck up on the forgiveness on the other seems very promising. But this is not something about it. They discuss it very short and in a very strong manner in the end. Yet this is about the life of Meera. It is not like she had all the freedom before the death of her husband. She still was covering her face and taking orders from people. The grandmother of her husband who is a widow too frowns upon her when she gets a chance (and of course asks for forgiveness when Meera is in the same position). Still Meera had the world of opportunity of being herself with her husband. The calm and dipped face is for the world of prejudiced and prisoner of their own system. She was able to live up her very small life in one minute’s conversation over the cell phone when Shankar stays away from her. This is been eliminated from her. Along with her sorrow for husband’s death goes her that small freedom she had. She believes this is the end of everything. Zeenat coming on intent to get the impossible shows her that this is no where near the end.

With those said, this is no movie of individuality or subtle film making. This is a dialogue of originality with flavours of sweet sentiments. There were all possibilities of the screenplay getting into the exploration of the misery and the loss. It is a true horror and it cannot be even remotely thought about in understanding, but it is enriching and happy to see to rescue some one through the peace and boldness of life. And there are comic scenes involving the conman. He would seem a bit cinematic and may be even extremely doubtful in his helping. They do not hide it by saying about a “friendship” in between them. Sure there is the opportune of knowing some one as strong and courageous as Zeenat, but he is a man and some times unknown control of love does not see those clearly. And nothing can be more heart warming and encouraging seeing the scene of him expressing his emotions to Zeenat and her reactions to it.

I will not deny that there were moments of predictability and even some cheap tricks in the film. There is a sequence of the very same Grandmother who picked on Meera helping her, which is quite evident. And also Meera’s mother in law still trying to blame some one for the unfortunate event of her son. But what makes the difference is the honesty of the dialogues spoken by those characters. The words are convincing and powerful enough to give those images of cheap tricks something different.

Finally and most importantly, how can we decide someone’s fate with the truth unknown? Meera does not know whether her husband succumbed in an accident. Zeenat does not know either but trusts her husband. But it is not about the question of whether it happened or not. It could go on as an individual bone of contention. Kukunoor conveniently makes us believe it as an accident. But at the same time we do not take sides on whether Meera to or not to sign the document. We get under the skin of Zeenat who knows and understands the outcome of it. Zeenat stands speechless when Meera confronts. More than the denial it is the guilt of misusing the trust. At that point, we are in the state of letting Meera do whatever she wants even if it involves taking a life due to her actions. The film just made us realize the vengeance in her. Do they leave it out there? Of course not and vengeance is overcome by forgiveness. And yes, I enjoyed the predictability in it.