‘Vanvaas’ movie review: Nana Patekar does the heavy lifting in this trite tearjerker

After striking a few high notes, Anil Sharma’s familiar take on the abuse of parents in old age suffers from staginess and predictability

Bollywood loves to recycle parental abuse almost every decade to create a tearjerker. Anil Sharma’s Vanvaas feels like a reincarnation of Avtaar (1983), Swarg (1990), and Baghban (2003), stories where a nurturing father suffers in his sunset years at the hands of his selfish sons.

Sharma who started his career with sensitive family dramas like Shradhanjali and Bandhan Kachche Dhagon Ka takes a break from the Gadar mayhem to revisit the familiar template that remains relevant for mainstream exploration. However, he has forgotten to adjust the volume of the background sound with the change in genre and update the formula for the times. Dated in design, theatrical in delivery, and tinged with patriarchal mores, it follows the predictable script where the parent is always a patriarch with property and the saviour is a male orphan with a heart of gold.

With little surprises in storytelling, it is left to the mercurial Patekar to do the heavy lifting. The seasoned performer embraces the quirks and quivers of Deepak Tyagi to generate an emotional bond with the audience. Carrying forward the model set by Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan, Patekar adds his magnetic appeal to create a moving picture of a strong father reduced to a fragile figure because of vanishing memory and fractured bonds. Supported by poetic monologues, penned by Sharma, he creates a poignant portrait of a withering soul in danger of losing the memories of his soulmate Vimala. Khusboo makes a rare special appearance in Hindi cinema and provides the emotional hook to the story. Left alone in Varanasi by his self-seeking sons and daughters-in-law, Deepak is about to be blown out when a playful crook Veeru (Utkarsh Sharma) lends him a hand.

The good thing is that Sharma attempts to reflect on the composite culture of Varanasi. Of course, there is iconography of Lord Shiva, Hanuman, and Ganga but Patekar also talks of the relevance of unionism and invokes Karl Marx in Varanasi. Sharma’s gaze travels beyond the ghats to give the audience a darshan of Buddha’s Sarnath. He also incorporates the nautch girl and nautanki culture of the region into the story and names his characters after iconic characters of Hindi films. There is a Veeru (Sholay), there is a Meena (Sharabi) and then there is a mausi (Ashwini Kalsekar) to create a powerful imagery of past and present but somehow barring a few evocative moments, the written word doesn’t translate to the screen.

Told from the point of view of parents, there is little space for shades in the black-and-white exploration of characters and events. Even the family audience of television, the space the film seems to be addressing, demands more layers in their stories these days. Sharma has dedicated the film to his parents and seems to have made it to project his son, Utkarsh. After hurrying through the family dynamics in Deepak’s home, the makers spend a lot of time in creating the world around Veeru which looks utterly staged. A work in progress, Utkarsh remains a satellite that needs a sun to reflect light.

In fact, there is a line in the film where Veeru’s beloved Meena, played by Simratt Kaur, urges him to learn how to express emotions from Deepak. When she says, “Inse seekh (learn from him)”, it feels like Meena is urging Utkarsh to learn from Patekar how to make the high-pitched melodrama believable.

Vanvaas is currently running in theatres