In a long time, I haven’t watched a movie more beautiful than this one – Stanley ka Dabba. I have no clue about the movies released in the past few months and as I browsed through the movie list, I decided to go for the one with a rather unusual name – Stanley ka Dabba. Undisputed praise by critics made my choice easy and the thought that a children’s movie will not be a bore after all, finally sealed the deal for me.
The movie encircles around 4th-F classroom where Stanley is one of the students along with his very sweet and caring group of friends. Why Stanley never brings his tiffin-box remains a mystery – certainly not as captivating as Sherlock Holmes’s novels but it has its own very unique charm.
A large chunk of the movie captures the periods after periods, teachers after teachers in his class, staffrooms, toilet-basins and simple, but yet beautiful, loitering around and ordinary observation of the children.
As the movie progresses, you realize that the movie is slow but still you yearn for more and that makes you keep watching the movie. The movie lacks a strong plot and any ups and downs of emotions either. Eventually, there isn’t much at the climax or the end of the movie but still you don’t regret the missing academic details of the movie.
Inevitably, you will be able be to associate your schooldays, classrooms, playground, functions, teachers, lunch-breaks, the innocent sharing and caring while watching the movie. In fact, I felt scared at certain scenes because (which I realized only later) the child in me was watching the movie.
Another interesting aspect of the movie is that of being like short-story in a Literature book; it has many open ends. After the movie, you can go on discussing as to why he did this or that? There is no end to it because the director didn’t close those ends for you – that is where the beauty of this movie is. In children’s life, there are no closed ends. There is no obsession in them to tie-up the loose ends either. Still, they remain in their happy and peaceful world.
There is no overdose of message that it set out for. It’s a crisp message, given within a couple of minutes with a fair bit of positivity.
Those innocent expressions, that exchange of glance in the class, the praise of the teacher taking the student to cloud nine, that one positive note by a teacher in the notebook, the murderous-fun-making by the teacher to strangulate the child’s confidence, extempore excuses, terror-carrying-around teachers, sweet teachers, indifferent teachers, bullying peons, those symbolic statues, the playground, the school-bell, the going to the toilet, drinking water from the bottle, go out of the class, the constant humming noise during the recess, eating tiffin between the periods, time-tables and those silent, unrecorded observations of a child are amongst the many sweet things that the movie has to offer to its viewers – child or adult.
Don’t go with the expectation that it is a Part 2 of Taare Zameen Pe – its creative director is this movie’s director – but this one will remain entrenched in your memory in times to come. You are sure to come out the theatre with a smile on your face.
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