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Meenaxi
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'Meenaxi'

By ApunKaChoice Bureau
Film critic, ApunKaChoice.Com

Being a painter by skill, M F Hussain has a knack for delving into abstractions. The way he puts colors to his canvas and brings forth the forms that more representative and less realistic, his Meenaxi is no less than a painting. But it is a creation with a non-linear story that is either completely incomprehensible or quite hard to grasp.

There is no doubt that Hussain imbues every frame of his movie with beautiful colors and symbolic elements, but he is not a good storyteller. At the end of the movie, a viewer is left too confounded to decide what the movie was actually about.

The

narrative of the movie keeps shifting from the basic storyline to the imaginations of a novelist drained of ideas for a good story. Sadly, this shift is sometimes too vaguely placed that it confuses a viewer regarding the placement of a particular scene or sequence in the movie.

Even the songs in the movie are jaggedly placed to add to the confusion. The only thing worth seeing in them is the resplendent colors and subtle representation of forms, thanks to superb cinematography by Santosh Sivan. Take, for instance, the song Noor-un-llah, which shows Tabu dancing to the beats of a partly-techno qawwali against the backdrop of dancers dressed as dervishes.

Tabu does a commendable job as the protagonist who adopts three different personas in three cities. Be it the mysterious perfume trader of Hyderabad, the exotic desert bloom of Jaisalmer or the orphaned Maria of Prague, Tabu brings about remarkable conviction in every role.

On the other hand, Kunal Kapoor, fails to impress in his acting debut. The way this young man carries himself before the camera is plagued by too much affectation.

Raghubir Yadav, gives out a performance that could be called as brilliant after compensating for the fact that his role in the movie is not written to the actor’s potential.

On the whole, Meenaxi is more like a painting with beautiful colors and hues, but lacking in meaning. Or if there is any meaning it is imperceptible to an ordinary viewer, not accustomed to the so-called artistic abstractions.

So either the movie is a lame attempt at being profound or it is a mystery riddle that perhaps only few people (with like-mindedness to Hussain) can decipher. But, objectively speaking, it appears that Hussain has tried to paint a Picasso here. And that too in vain.

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