Dil Bechara Movie Review: It Is A Heartwarming Send-Off To Sushant!

Dil Bechara(Disney-Hotstar)

Starring Sushant Singh Rajput, Sanjana Sanghi

Directed  by  Mukesh Chhabra

 It is very  difficult to not get emotional  about Dil Bechara, it’s about two dying  people in  love. Also, and  more importantly, the film’s hero, a true hero if ever there was one, left us before the film could be  released.

 There is  no denying the  fact that the  emotions  connected  to the experience of watching the  film overlap  dangerously with  our feelings  about the real-life tragedy that  underlines  the onscreen goings-on.And  to watch Sushant  dying in  the  film,asking his best friend(Sahil Vaid), ‘Will you miss me?’ from the deathbed is beyond  ominous.

For  us watching  the  film after its leading man’s death  a month ago, Dil Bechara is  more than a  film. It is a  warm, affectionate,cute and  cuddly send-off to an actor who had so much to give.And he gives  quite a  lot  of  it here playing  Manny, a manically happy cancer survivor who wants to sprint across  the  universe  on one leg. The limp by the way is as moody as happiness. It comes  and goes as it pleases.

To his courtship with the demure dying Bengali girl Kizie(newcomer Sanjana Sanghi, impressively  natural) Sushant  brings a  quality  of Jim Carrey on  a day when he, Carrey,  just wants to be Ranveer Singh.  Sushant’s  performance  is filled with  a fatal fervor. He  is what Anand  in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s  masterpiece on a jovial  terminally ill hero would have been if Sushant had played  the part .

Whether that is  good or bad, doesn’t really matter. We are in this  not for quality checks, but  simply to watch a charismatic star  do his final hurrah. To that extent, neither  the film’s  theme(it’ s not about how  large it is but how meaningful) nor  the first-time director  lets  down  Sushant.  He  gives a free-falling performance confident that director Mukesh  Chhabra is there to catch him.

 Chhabra  fills the  rather gloomy  subject of two dying  souls in  love, with extra helpings of  gloom. There  is  a  really funny dinner sequence at  Kizie’s  place where Manny gathers the  courage to tell  Kizie’s mother what  her father has  never had  the courage  to  say  to her: that her cooking sucks.

Saif Ali Khan shows up  in the  Paris portion of  the  plot  playing a  jerk of a poet with surprising relish.He is  the only  unpleasant  character in this  over-sweetened confection and  hence a welcome diversion.Saswata  Chatterjee and  Swastika  Chatterjee are first-rate  as Kizie’s parents. Saswata is specially  good conveying through  subtle smiles and distant  frowns  the pain  of   a doting daddy losing his  daughter while trying to keep a brave  front.

 By  the  time  the  plot moves to Paris to fulfil   Kizie’s  dying wish, Dil Bechara has  us wishing we could somehow change the  narrative of death around the corner.  High hopes.

Sushant’s  Manny spends his  pre-death  moments in  a rickety  movie theatre  of Jamshedpur  watching his  idol Rajnikant beat up his enemies. Even Rajini can’t defeat death.