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There are questions that we choose not to face in our lives and if someone still wants to pose them, they better make them guised enough not to make us take them head on. Piku, almost surprisingly, succeeds in doing just that without any hullabaloo.
From the second Amitabh Bachchan's name appears on the screen in that awesome font, you know you are going to watch something different. Piku was poised to be a film close to reality but it isn't. It has all the conveniences the plot required in order to bring about a story that is as filmy as it gets. The first hour and a half of it is shit; at least all about it. Amitabh Bachchan plays Bashkor Banerjee, a 70 year old man who is always constipated and whose health issues have made him quite sensitive towards them. Piku (Deepika) is his daughter of 30 and lives with him to take care of her father. As it turns out, Bashkor doesn't want Piku to marry and live a submissive life like her mother because he believes it to be a life lead by people of "low IQ". It is a modern family but Piku is still deeply rooted into her responsibility towards her father. To put it in short, it's the old family drama with (or without) a lot of shit. But something changes on a road trip as Rana (Irrfan Khan) drives them to their parental home in Kolkata from Delhi. The characters influence each other during the journey; they do not necessarily change anything during this but try to understand each other. But the movie is not at all about any of these characters but about life and the realization that it has to end one day.
The film boasts of the artistic sides of the rich Bengali cult. These are people who love art, can appreciate good music and have actually witnessed the masterclass of Ray's Cinema. Apart from the unpleasant crap scenario, the last 30 minutes are some of the best Cinema you would find in Bollywood these days. The beauty of Kolkata, the food of it and the ever so enticing waters have been hinted at and skipped not to make a mess out of them. These minutes are what you see the film for and the makers know exactly what they want to show you. It has the right chords and Shoojit Sircar strucks them at the right spots.
Talking of the highs and lows, Amitabh's Bengali avatar is as annoying and as humorous as it can get. Still, I had qualms with Deepika's titular character of Piku. She calls herself a method actor and yet I never see her playing a different character than that of Deepika Padukone herself (barring Ram-Leela and Chennai express to a certain degree). One other problem was the film editing which is almost amateurish. Rest of the things, the background music, the songs, the cinematography- all are just fine and to the tune of the movie. All in all, it is a simple story with superb watchability quotient and something Bollywood isn't producing these days.
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