Review of ‘David’ (Hindi and Tamil)

The poster of 'David'

‘David’ (Hindi and Tamil)

Director: Bijoy Nambiar

Cast: Vikram, Neil Nithin Mukesh, Tabu and many others

Two lives, one name. One big practical joke on the audience.

Vikram surprises as an actor, for all the wrong reasons. His struggles in the film industry and the accident are the kind of stuff that legends are made of. After years of struggle, he got a brilliant break with ‘Sethu’. For a while, everything seemed fine and then the troubles began.

After playing mentally-challenged and blind characters, he is back with ‘David’. This time, all his physical faculties are fine. The problem is with the story.

The Hindi version has three Davids, I mean, three stories, with Neil Nithin Mukesh’s segment getting more prominence. This was shot in black and white. The story actually is very unclear, but the copulation scene was good.

I was told that the Tamil version has only two segments – Vikram’s David and Jeeva’s David.

Vikram is a drunkard in Goa. His bride abandons him at the church altar and runs away with his best friend. When his other best friend gets himself engaged to be married to a deaf and mute girl, Vikram ends up developing a huge crush on her for no reason at all. The director doesn’t bother to convincingly explain why. Vikram’s friend-philosopher-guide in this film is Tabu, who prods him to stop the wedding and propose to her.

Why can’t our Bollywood filmmakers think beyond drunkards and Remo Fernandez whenever they make a film about Goa? Surely there is more to the lovely state than those two! 

Back to the story. Fortunately, Vikram doesn’t stop the wedding and overdoes the ‘sacrificing lover’ bit. The audience fails to feel any sympathy for the character.

The third David is a guitarist and the son of a pastor. Dreadlocks are normally associated with reggae, but this guitarist sports them in as early as 1990s.

The list of music directors is longer than the script. 6 music directors had got together to compose the tunes and none fails to register in the minds. Bizarre!

Other than their names, the characters have got nothing at all in common.

This is probably how the film’s idea was born

·                Write three short stories.

·                Try real hard to make a full length feature film script with one of them.

·                Doesn’t work? No problem! Just film all the three short stories.

·                Pick the one scene from each story sequentially and arrange them in the same order – scene 1  from Story 1, scene 1 from Story 2, scene 1 from Story 3, scene 2 from story 1…

·                Don’t let “formalities” like continuity, narration and logic discourage you.

·                If the producers ask you to explain what on earth was similar in all these three stories, tell them that the lead characters of all these three completely unconnected stories have the same name.

·                If the producers are not convinced, tell them that you will have to reshoot the entire film. That would terrify them and shut them up. Forever.

Vikram was the first celebrity whom I had interviewed. He is very suave, friendly and charming in person. It is heartbreaking to see the way he is wasting his time and money over one dreadful film after the other.