Review Of Manorama Six Feet Under

A nice thriller !

Overall Rating ***

Just so that you may know, Manorama clearly draws an inspiration from Roman Polanski’s 1974 classic film China Town starring Jack Nicholson. It takes guts to remake a film which is screened and dissected at cinema classes all over the world. So does debutant director Navdeep Singh manage to pull it off? To an extent!.

If you have seen the original China Town , you will know exactly what is in store. China Town was a complete diverse film and not an easy movie to understand in its first view. Manorama is a bit simpler to comprehend but that doesn’t mean you keep your brains at home.

Satyaveer Singh (Abhay Deol) is a PWD officer who is suspended for taking commission while on duty. His family comprises of his wife Nimmi (Gul Panag), his son and his corrupt police-officer brother in law Brijmohan (Vinay Pathak). While serving his suspension order, he ends up writing a detective novel Manorama. A woman (Sarika) who claims to be the wife of MLA P P Rathod (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) asks him to spy on her husband whom she thinks is having an affair with another woman. Satyaveer takes up the new job of being a detective and shoots photographs of Rathod with another woman. However, later on Satyaveer finds out that the woman who hired him was never Rathod’s wife in the first place. Who was the woman and why did she lie about her identity? As Satyaveer probes further he finds out that there is a bigger scam involved and as he delves deeper he finds himself even more trapped.

The film keeps you guessing and just when you expect the obvious another mystery turns up. Sorry to say but much credits cannot be given to the screenplay writer of the film for that as a lot-in fact most of it is borrowed from the original film. However, the more controversial parts of the original have been replaced with something which will blend with the Indian audience’s taste.
One problem is we wonder why Satyaveer is hell bent on solving the entire episode. The reasoning the director has given us is because he has never made a decision in his life and this is the first time he is doing something for himself. It seems a bit absurd to put one’s own life and family in danger to satisfy your search for power and personal satisfaction.

The film has been shot brilliantly and the rustic look of Rajasthan gives credibility to the proceedings. However, at some parts the Rajasthani dialect between characters might leave you confused, if you don’t understand the language.

Abhay Deol in a complete new and mature look is the light of the film. Never going over the top, Abhay does well for himself as the calm and composed Satyaveer Singh. For the record Abhay’s last film was loosely inspired from another Hollywood film Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino. Gul Panag compliments Satyaveer’s character very well. After Dor , she comes up with another fine performance. Raima Sen looks beautiful and does well for herself. Kulbhushan Kharbanda doesn’t have much of a role but he enacts his scenes with conviction. Vinay Pathak moves out of his Bheja Fry territory and gets full marks for his portrayal as the village cop.

The background music really goes well and thankfully there are no songs in the film except for one which plays in the background.

Director Navdeep Singh does a much better job in remaking a classic than what Ram Gopal Varma did with his Aag . Showing a lot of promise in his first film, Navdeep has found his type of cinema and we hope he sticks to it and gives us more films like these.

For people who grew up reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes or even Agatha Christie mysteries, this film is definitely for you. However, the film has its limitations (less entertainment value, drama, difficult plot) which the common man yearns for while venturing out to watch a movie. But the film is definitely a step ahead in the quest for better mystery films in India.