Let’s be straight – this movie is
full of shit! Literally, not figuratively. If it was up to us, we’d rather name
the film ‘Stool’, but let’s proceed with the existing title and get to know
Piku a little better.
Amitabh Bachchan plays Bhaskor
Banerjee, a senile, 70-year-old Bengali man, who lives with his daughter Piku.
Like most people at his age, his primary time-pass is being concerned about
imaginary medical ailments, and troubling everyone else; family, friends or strangers, with knowledge
regarding the same, the various colors and the state of his faeces in particular. Like the
stereotypical Bengali babu, he is stubborn, argumentative, and has the last
word in every discussion. Despite these traits, he holds a very modern, and
gender empowering view towards life and society. Deepika is the titular
character Piku, a short-tempered woman, who has to deal with her possessive
daddy’s shit the entire day. Irrfan is the owner of a taxi service which Piku
uses regularly, and dealing with his own family problems with a nagging mother
and sister. To escape this atmosphere, he agrees to drive Piku’s even weirder
family, 1500 kms away to their family estate in Kolkata.
All the people whose parents fall
above the age of 65 years, must bring them along to watch Piku. The film talks
very humorously about the problems old-age poses for the seniors themselves, as
well as their confused children, who try their best to deal with, and solve the
problems without feeling frustrated or irritated due to their general
helplessness. Piku breaks the negative idea propagated by popular films like Baghban
that most children abandon or neglect their parents in their time of distress. Through
her extremely commendable depiction of Piku, Padukone shows the psychological
struggles the modern family person goes through, in trying to manage both their
professional and personal spheres, especially when they are supposed to manage
someone as difficult as the man-child that is Bhaskor Banerjee (Big B). At one
time, the viewer feels irritated by the tantrums of the angry Piku, but then at
another point, one understands the reasons behind her perpetual temper and
irritated personality.
The movie is immensely
entertaining. The dialogues are simple and relatable. Big B’s incessant
obsession with his faeces keeps people entertained in a rib-tickling manner,
but the point is: for how long? After a point, the potty and motion references
get way too frequent and tiring, and the audience too was having difficulty in
gulping down their popcorn. Other than that, the scenes are light, and a neat
depiction of the typical drawing-room discussion about your older family
members, and their misadventures with senility.
Irrfan Khan makes no additional
effort in playing the driver, Rana Chaudhary, and none was required. His performance is extremely
free-flowing and natural, and nothing exceptional to the quintessential Irrfan
Khan experience. Both Khan and Padukone feel very easy in their respective
shoes, and show no difficulty in rubbing shoulders with a figure like Bachchan.
Mr. Bachchan on the other hand, had to put in much more of an effort for his role,
and we’re still not sure if the final result was befitting his calibre. His
performance is jovial enough to keep the viewers hooked in rib-tickling
laughter, but it was loud and quite over-expressive at particular points. His
accent too was excessively stressed upon, and rather than doing justice to the
personality of a Bengali figure, was more slap-stick in nature.
Side performances include stars
like Raghubir Yadav, and Jisshu Sengupta.
One thing we would like to point
out is that director Shoojit Sircar seems to be quite in love with his Bengali
heritage, which seems to be an important factor in all of his films. Just an
observation.
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