Dhobi Ghat (2010)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

A lot of fun.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Dhobi Ghat (mumbai diaries) is one piece of art of the Indian cinema. It is defiantly not the normal Hindi cinema stuff ... although i am glad that it isn't. I personally am very attached to Mumbai I was born there and lived for 10years+ therefore i am very attached to the city as well as the movie. The movie starts with an outlook on the city of Mumbai. It revolves around the lives of 4 main characters and there drastically different lives. The movie has these characters that are connected but still not connected set in Mumbai just the way Mumbai is. As the movie progresses the story unfolds and the story and the characters get involved with each other.All the characters are from different walks of live and strive to find a silver lining which they may or may not find.Over all i loved it, its a kind of an art movie and its not everyones cup of tea. Although its great work by the actors and director!

There is something refreshingly different about "Dhobi Ghat". It spins a fable of the world we claim to know and live in yet it's unlike anything we've seen before. The answer to what makes it so different is a lot like the characters it tells us about : enigmatic and complex. Kiran Rao's debut succeeds in picking out those few emotions which we experience everyday but never succeed in comprehending them.Of the millions of storytellers of the chaotic, vibrant and secretive city of Mumbai, Rao narrows it down to just four of them. Munna (Prateik Babbar), is a washer-man who aspires to become an actor one day. His luck takes a turn for the better when he encounters Shai (Monica Dogra), an American banker who comes to Mumbai to pursue her interests. Shai is an adventure junkie, intrigued by the squalor of Mumbai, and befriends Munna because she needs a friend to show her around the city. In the course of things, Munna falls in love with her but she has her eyes on Arun (Aamir Khan), a reclusive artist. Arun has a dark past and therefore fails to have an emotional connection with anyone. After he moves into a new house, he comes across a bunch of tapes in which a newly married woman Yasmin (Kirti Malhotra), an ex-tenant, tells her brother of the new life she's experiencing in the city of Mumbai. Hesitant at first, Arun becomes increasingly fascinated by her life. The film explores the intertwined stories of four people who are, in different ways, affected for the better or worse by the delights and tragedies of the city that never sleeps."Dhobi Ghat" is a film reminiscent of the miraculous Indian art films of the 1980s. Although Rao uses the unusually chaotic city of Mumbai as her muse, the film is something as quiet as a whisper. Rao cleverly uses archaic locations around the city to give it a melancholic look and feel, yet there is something strangely optimistic about it. "Dhobi Ghat" is a remarkably observant film. In one fantastic sequence, when Shai asks her maid to bring tea for Munna and herself, the maid gets it in an ordinary glass for him, clearly highlighting the appalling difference in class which exists all around us which we sadly choose to ignore. The story of Arun and Yasmin merits a deserving round of applause for Rao, who chooses something drastically different from the usual mundane crap we're subjected to in Indian films today. It is both imaginative and fascinating, and Rao tackles it with vigor and a sense of urgency. Tushar Kanti Ray's cinematography is outstanding, capturing the right essentials of the city with his faithful camera. Somewhere in the midst of the film, a hollow feeling begins to creep in but you can't place where it could've originated from, which is harrowing. One grave error on Rao's part is that she doesn't let her characters evolve completely. Making use of an age-old cliché of an outsider coming to explore the city of Mumbai, Rao ends up playing herself through the stereotypic character of Shai, because she documents the city without any affection whatsoever. I couldn't quite understand the relationship Munna and Shai share, for there are flashes of affection between them, but the depth of it is kept cryptic. In my view, had Rao made the film about for people who are used to the abrupt tragedies and small delights of the city, the film could've turned out to be better and much more mature. That, you see, would be a tribute to the city.Of the performances, Aamir Khan is reliably excellent, playing the brooding Arun with exemplary calm and confidence. Babbar and Dogra are convincing in their respective roles, but the best of the lot is Kirti Malhotra, who has the briefest role of the four leads. Though she's hardly seen in the film, her oratory skills are simply terrific. Yasmin is a character all of us have encountered at some point or the other in our lives, a passive spectator but who can speak volumes with her silence."Dhobi Ghat" is a flawed effort and is criminally passed off as a documentary about the city. Though Mumbai does play a significant role in the film, it is a mere representation of how an outsider embraces it. The film is devoid of a plot and the soothing and redeeming qualities of the city are never explored, because the morally complex characters get nowhere at the end of it. Still, I'm glad that someone in the industry has no qualms about making an independent film in a commercialized film industry. It's a good film but far from a perfect one, and if you can overlook the gaping holes in its premise, it can make a compelling experience.

There are so many good reviews about this movie, so I watched it also because it is produced by Amir Khan. The movie tries to be deep without really succeeding. Its a story about a few characters - Prateik plays a laundryman/dhobi, an immigrant photographer comes over from the US and befriends Prateik, Amir Khan is a divorced painter, and a woman records her life in videos that Amir finds and watches. I found Prateik the most interesting mainly because he had several shades - he was a wannabe actor, and interacted with a few different characters through his dhobi work. The immigrant was totally shallow, a typical photographer taking photos of every part of India and finding it all quite deep and profound, yet ashamed of letting her friends know that she knows Prateik. She was the most under- developed character. Amir Khan is just there as a painter. The worse part was that the immigrant slept with Amir the first time she met him yet was surprised that he didn't want to continue the "relationship" and considered it a one-night stand - duh, then don't sleep with the man the first night you meet him!Overall, the movie tries very hard to be deep and falls short. It was a boring movie, with no character development. You really don't understand what the characters are about, what drives them, etc. The movie is also directed and edited poorly, some scenes are very abrupt. I am very surprised Amir did this movie, he must really love Kiran Rao. He is such a perfectionist yet he acted in such a horribly directed film. I don't recommend this film.I usually love art films and have seen many many art movies, this one tries hard to be one but fails miserably.

I do enjoy love blockbusters. The last Indian movie I enjoyed was GUZAARISH. Yes it was sentimental, but I appreciated it for what it was, just the same.DHOBI GHAT is a different animal altogether. This is much more like the sort of movie that might win an award at the Sundance Film Festival. I still haven't finished watching it (it's running as I'm typing this) but I wanted to organise my thoughts about the film right away.I think DHOBI GHAT is brilliant. It's powerful, but subtle. It's cleverly constructed and it forces you to think. And like Life, it's sad, but with hope ...It's not escapism. And I respect the heck out of Aamir Khan and his talented wife Kiran Rao for constantly trying to break out of the Bollywood straitjacket and do something different and worthwhile.But brilliant as Khan is, he can't do it all by himself. So, come on Bollywood. Give the guy a hand. Make a few more movies like this and show that you can make lots of different kinds of movie, and not just escapism all the time. Widen and grow your audience. It has to be good for the industry.