Rating: 3.5/5.
Two aspects of Pink stand out: One, its delicate handling of a sensitive topic: inherent gender-biases that women brave out daily, regularly, almost everywhere. Second, it lacks a connect with the characters that prevent it from being an engaging, engrossing courtroom-drama.
So, the first one tells me to give it a rating of 5/5 but then the flaws, missing details, slow patches, weak performances, tumble it down from the perch and land it around 3.5/5.
The superbly brilliant aspect of Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury directed Pink is its editing.
The movie treads on the path it opens on: A late-night party outing boomerangs for three girls and guys when a guy forces himself on a girl. She resists and in a ‘fit of rage’ moment smashes a glass on his forehead. Male-egos bruised and, in retaliation, using their influential background, they harass the ladies making their daily lives difficult. The girl is arrested on ‘Attempt to Murder’ charges and a courtroom argument, counter-argument drama rolls on.
Pink doesn’t have a sub-plot. It never digresses. Even when it does once – Amitabh Bachchan goes into a didactic monologue in the court-room – he admits on his own, “That was a deviation.”
This, precisely yet paradoxically, is Pink’s strong and weak point. It’s purely about the bias and the irrational discrimination ladies undergo when they ‘indulge’ in ‘activities’ that are labelled as ‘casual’ for guys.
The collateral damage of this is you don’t ‘connect’ to the characters and end-up feeling for ‘their situation’ rather than ‘their trauma’. Their suffering keeps a lump in your throat, almost without a break. However, eventually, when you walk out of the theater, you remember the topic but not the three ladies.
Humor, almost absent in Pink, is subtle. It doesn’t help in reliving the agony (in the minds of the viewer) that the plot keeps generating.
Consequently, there are things that Pink chooses not to detail: From where does Meenal (Taapsee Pannu) draw her strength, what is the role of the families of the victims, what went into the making of Bachchan’s character or what makes him interested in ladies’ case? These are just a few of many unanswered questions in Pink.
The details are obscure, too. The characters in the background exhibit inconsistency. The third guy who initially appears considerate towards Meenal bears hostile expressions on his face in the courtroom. The time in the judge’s watch is 645 pm. The assistant of the defense lawyer pretending to be taking down notes is actually scribbling zigzag lines on the paper.
However, the plot remains the backbone of Pink. First half is quick and thrilling; it leads you to the courtroom in the second half.
This is where a few characters draw your attention in an adorable way: The lady cop, when her bluff is called, fascinatingly manages to hold her ground; the prime culprit, Rajveer Singh (Angad Bedi), generates a loathsome feeling in you; the stressed-out judge (Dhritiman Chatterjee) has a voice vibrating with over-alertness; all ensure a powerful and gripping courtroom drama. Of course, there are the tumultuous and shocking questions of BigB for the lady.
However, at the center of all this, is a weak link – the monotonous defense lawyer (Piyush Mishra). He appears to be dwarfed in front of BigB and fails to dominate him. The two don’t engage in a verbal duel or a tug-of-war. To steal ground from BigB, he is expected to be sinister, manipulative and tenacious. He is none of the above.
Amitabh Bachchan with powerful performance as an ace-lawyer, Deepak Sehgal, has upped the bar – for his own self as others, half his age, are not even close – even further. He is an unusual and a rather eclectic mix of an angry, frustrated, grieving yet compassionate lawyer who is battling a mental disease, too. BigB plays Sehgal to perfection.
Often, Pink indulges in loud sobbing of the victims. This, overdone a number of times, is interestingly countered by a balancing act by Bachchan: Silence. He speaks only in the court. Elsewhere the tensed-up wrinkles of his face does the talking.
The main protagonist of the movie, Minal Arora (played by Taapsee Pannu) is a victim of a horrific mishap. The details give you goose-bumps. Pink elegantly sways away your feelings from Minal, and instead, engrosses you with the topic of bias against women. Taapsee does an average job in tenderly reaching out to you, attempting to register Minal’s anguish in your mind.
The other roommates of Minal: Falak and Andrea (Kirti Kulhari and Andrea Tariang, respectively), look genuinely concerned and aggrieved for their roommate’s fate. The three are vividly fragile when they cry together after Falak makes a false admission in the court.
As the credits roll, you are likely to get interested in the reel on the left-margin. I would say, hang on further and watch-out for the poem that BigB recites. The sheer powerful elocution would be an extra-return on your spending.
Pink is likely to hit a chord with everyone, especially the ladies. It is thought-provoking cinema but you are unlikely to remember it’s characters, as time passes by.
It’s a movie you must watch, entirely for two reasons (of course, apart for the topic it touches on): For the spirited way in which the ladies battle-out the deeply-entrenched gender-bias in the society, and yes, BigB, undoubtedly. He, when on screen, makes everyone else, be it young or old, jostle out for even an inch in the frame.
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