CAST: Amitabh Bachchan, Neena Gupta, Rashmika Mandana, Pavail Gulati, Elli AvrRam, Sahil Mehta, Sunil Grover,
DIRECTOR: Vikas Bahl
Another movie trying to speak to the processing of pandemic grief. We say “another” because here is another effort gone awry in trying to balance a narrative.
In Goodbye, writer-director Vikas Bahl delves into how different people have different ways of coping with sorrow. When Harish (Amitabh Bachchan) loses his wife Gayatri (Neena Gupta), he faces a “bhagbhanish’ situation where his his children are busy with their work or their social life, and the neighbors are more interested in gossip and providing obligatory and unsolicited advice.
Having missed the last phone call from her mother, Harish’s daughter Tara (Rashmika Mandanna) is outraged about that. She also cannot see any logic in the rituals that Harish carries out and is generally incensed . The elder son Karan (Pavail Gulati) cannot take his mind off work and his American wife Daisy (Elli AvrRam) strives to fit in. Harish’s adopted son Angad (Sahil Mehta) responds to stress by overeating, while the youngest Nakul is unreachable.
The story of how elderly people in our society struggle to fit in is an oft handled topic in Hindi cinema. The filial expectations of society and parents is generally a tear-jerking story of neglect and apathy and the younger people who do not rise up to the standards expected in being respectful in being caretakers of the older generation are villainized.
From Rajesh Khanna’s Avtaar and Swarg to Amitabh Bachchan’s Baghban, the list is spectacular.
Bahl attempts a tearjerker by combining the two templates of children failing filial piety and adopted children being better than own children, but the entire hybrid template just doesn’t land. As the movie progresses, we realize that the characters are underwritten, the scenes are overwritten, and the logic of the conflicts is unexplained.
What annoys the senses about the entire movie is the authority with which it presents its sententious narrative.
Right from the moralistic explanation of the value of rituals to how science and faith can coevolve, the entire narrative is sermonizing.
There are emotional moments in the flashback scenes that capture the love story of Gayatri and Harish that are well staged but mostly, the story is insensitive and agonizing. Not only does it not fit into modern-day lives but also assumes that as people grow old, they cannot do without their children.
Bachchan tries to steward the film together with his time-tested capacity to move the audience with even the superficial stuff. The monologue where he speaks to the ashes of Gayatri is the high point of the film. It is a strategy to cast Bachchan for his script explaining monologues these days.
Rashmika is effective as the rage-filled daughter. But Tara’s anger against her father comes across as absurd.
Between Bachchan and the brilliant Sunil Grover, the laptop-wielding priest talking about the deeper meanings of life and death and how memories become stories that keep nurturing us- they are just not enough to recuperate a poorly written concept and script that only serves to glorify filial piety.
