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Zee 5 Big New Year’s Eve Bungle

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Zee5 has released  two films today Wah Zindagi  and Turtle which seem to be one work halved into two. Turtle tells  the same  story of the same  drought-stricken  village  that Wah Zindagi carries in . The cast for both the  films is the same except that the talented Naveen Kasturia(who  most  assuredly deserves a better  deal than this)  is only part of Wah Zindagi.

Looking at this  half of this preposterous ‘slice’ of life, Wah Zindagi opens in a parched village in Rajasthan which has  known no  rain for years.A  little boy is considered manhoos(inauspicious) and  driven out of  the village , but only after  undergoing  a child marriage.  The bride and groom grow up to be Naveen Kasturia  and Plabita Borthakur, talented actors who go through the  film like headless chickens in search of a pot to simmer in.

I felt sorry  for both actors who are given dialogues that sound like they were slogans  stolen from the back of autorickshaws.

Dinesh S Yadav  is credited with the direction  of both  films. He must have worked against all odds to create something so deplorably  bereft of  an innerlife . There is  no centre to the plot.  It moves in unexpected ways, and  not in a good way. It’s just not sure where  it  is going.

Sadly  the  whole presentation is not only dated, it also  lacks coherence  , with the hero  selling a indigenous  anti-China message  in a plot that seems  way too ambitious  for its own good. The talented Vijay Raaz shows up at some point as a town’s  spokesperson being bullied by  his mother for not  being married  even though he is 35 . Poor Vijay Raaz cringes  through   the part.I am not  too sure why he agreed to be part  of this scrambled film.

More importantly why is Zee5  releasing this  4-year  old  film now, when all the actors had  probably forgotten about it. What a startling wakeup call for  the New Year!

Turtle,the companion piece is marginally better than Wah Zindagi. It features  Sanjay Mishra as a  village patriarch  struggling to  eke out  water for a famine-ridden village:  yes, the same  village as  the one in Wah Zindagi. The drought is  contagious: it not only affects village  but also the  two films(actually one cut into two, for reasons  best known to the sagacious OTT platform) .

The aridity  of   cogent or  even coherent  ideas runs through both films.Sanjay Mishra  could be  considered the saving grace of the graceless double-bill.  But  he has precious little  to do in Wah Zindagi and  is all over the place  in Turtle.He looks  uncertain about not only the situation on-hand but  civilization in general.

Do  yourself  a favour . If you can’t find anything better to do for this New Years weekend,then extract your nails, one  by one, with  a plier. Less painful.

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