There are some movies that manage to excite you on the power of their title itself. 'Maine Gandhi Ko Nahi Maara' is one of them. A movie that got into limelight just about 4 weeks back did well in arousing your curiosity around itself. But does it manage to meet the expectations?
Sadly no!
It attempts at coming near to it but looses its direction midway. Prime reason being that the movie tries touching upon too many issues - protagonist's guilt of having killed Gandhiji, an old man's position within his own family, fast fading Gandhi ideologies and the Alzheimer disease.
If the makers believed that this would manage to shake audience's soul and force them to think hard about today's times, then that doesn't really happen. Hence the film doesn't come up trumps from both the messaging perspective and the entertainment quotient! Thankfully the film doesn't loose out completely due to good performances but more about that later.
Film is set in a Mumbai middle class family headed by Professor Uttam Chaudhary [Anupam Kher] who has a working daughter Trisha [Urmila Matondkar] and a college going son [Addy] living with him while his eldest son [Rajit Kapur] is in Merchant Navy. A retied man, he is fast turning forgetful to such an extent that the instances from the present vanish away in moments while the memories of his past strike back with strengthened venom on a continuous basis.
His worsening condition results in Trisha's boyfriend [Vishwaas Paandya] of 4 years calling off the relation. But Trisha still believes that her father would get well one day soon and seeks the help of the best of the psychiatrists in the town. All this while Professor continues to sink further and his issue aggravates to such an extent that he starts having problems because of a memory from his childhood.
Now he starts believing that he accidentally killed Gandhiji.
As a result of this, Professor doesn't find peace anywhere. Such is the extent of his trauma that even his house starts seeming to him as a jail while his family appears to him as his captors. Trisha goes all out to get her father out of this whirlpool of thoughts, memories and mental imbalance. She approaches famous psychiatrist Sidharth Kothari [Praveen Dabas] and his senior [Prem Chopra] who try to go deep into this extraordinary case, find a real problem of this guilt and come up with a solution that may just about manage to cure her father.
They arrange for a fake courtroom drama where Professor is made to stand as an accused. How this manages to bring the guilt out from the Professor forms the rest of the story.
The movie goes along fine as far as setting of the basic plot is concerned. In the initial reels the father-daughter relationship and the failing condition of the Professor is established. Towards the interval point when Professor reveals his guilt about Gandhiji's assassination, it sounds a bit absurd but you still try absorbing it as you are curious to know about the reason behind this guilt. But from thereon it goes all downhill with the proceedings becoming exceedingly grim. Even the disclosure of the guilt from his childhood doesn't make much of an impact while the very idea of a fake courtroom setting is childish to say the least.
From this point on things becomes so theatrical that you wonder of this portion of the film is directed by the same man Jahnu Barua who did a fairly good job in the first half. The entire courtroom sequence featuring Boman Irani and Anupam Kher ironically becomes comical and hence manages to vanish away whatever built up done by then. Climax take the cake when just after being "acquitted" by the court, Anupam Kher delivers a rather out-of-place and unwanted speech about Gandhiji. Frankly, if the me
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