So, even in a tale of eternal love, it’s the three Muslim protagonists who either kill or sacrifice their lives. In Varman’s interpretation, Muslims are either hot-headed villains or victims – there is no in-between. In the film, Varman immediately establishes Zafar’s religion by the most cliched identifiers: Dhawan, who enthusiastically overacts, wears more kajal in the film than most Maybelline models, offers namaz for a token scene, and is shown wearing a skull cap for less than five seconds. Varman, who debuted with 2 States, is the latest writer-director to join the ranks of Hindi filmmakers who don’t let their surface-level understanding of minorities impede them from doing injustice to the intricacies of a Hindu- Muslim romance. However, Kalank isn’t merely a gloriously bad film – it’s also a cautionary tale about uninspired and pretentious filmmaking that has the smugness to get away with peddling offensive tropes. In fact, it’s hard to fault Kalank for getting carried away with its inherent groan-worthiness when the recent successes of Kesari and Total Dhamaal prove that undermining the audience’s intelligence has always been a totally acceptable genre of Hindi filmmaking. I’m the last person to take exception to Varman and Karan Johar’s fundamental right to consistently churn out shoddy, forgettable big-budget films ( Kalank is pegged around Rs 80 crore). As a result, Kalank discloses it so nonchalantly as if it’s discussing the humidity in Mumbai and not divulging the ruins of a decade-old affair that has broken families and given two grown men unwavering daddy issues. By the time the big reveal happens in the film’s bloated second half, even the writers lose interest in it. It’s ironic that the suspense of the entire film hinges on the secret identity of Zafar’s father, given that Kalank is so lazily crafted that it takes less than five minutes for anyone to put two and two together.
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In the process, Roop falls in love with her estranged son Zafar (Varun Dhawan) a lower-class Muslim blacksmith whose personality trait involves reminding everyone that he is an illegitimate child and fighting CGI-bulls in his free time. The rest of the film’s “plot” is so puerile that it can be instantly guessed by a five-year-old: Stuck in a loveless marriage, Roop starts taking singing lessons from Bahar Begum (Madhuri Dixit), a courtesan who lives on the Hira mandi, the neighbourhood’s red-light district and spends most of the film either glaring or crying. Giving Dev’s indifference a tough competition is his widowed father Balram Chowdhury (Sanjay Dutt) whose contribution in his life and in the film is limited to stomping around perennially hunched as if he doesn’t believe in the concept of necks. Dev’s wardrobe of Fabindia kurtas and his round glasses make it amply clear that he is a liberal – naturally he doesn’t resist his dying wife linking his profile with Roop. The girl in question is the lower-class Roop ( Alia Bhatt in her most pointless role ever), a manic pixie kitegirl who agrees to marry Dev by burning her books. She – essentially a Paakhi redux from Lootera – immediately does the most natural thing a terminally ill-patient can think of: Reach a random girl’s house and set her up with her London-educated newspaper editor husband, Dev Chowdhury (Aditya Roy Kapur). Kalank opens with Satya (Sonakshi Sinha), the daughter-in-law of an affluent Hindu family being diagnosed with cancer and told that she possibly has just a year left to live. And even this period epic about interfaith star-crossed lovers in the time of Partition, needlessly runs at almost three hours, proving once again that editors are really an endangered species in Bollywood. Similar to Thugs of Hindostan, Kalank’s understanding of history is more misinformed than the versions spewed by alt-historian Vivek Agnihotri. Its threadbare plot feels as believable as Vijay Mallya’s innocence and its romantic conflict has the emotional intelligence of a robot and the shock value of a rejected saas bahu serial. Like the Aamir Khan-starrer, Varman takes a star-studded cast of A-listers and then goes out of his way to ensure that they have zero chemistry with each other so that their presence can do nothing to elevate the film’s proceedings. Set in 1944 in Husnabad, a town near Lahore, Kalank has all the makings of being the next Thugs of Hindostan. On a good day, Kemmu, a superbly limited actor, can contort his face to conjure up only one expression – the problem is Abhishek Varman’s Kalank feels like it was shot on all the bad days. You know a film has already given up on itself when its devious villain – an unhinged murderer who destroys the lives of the protagonists – is played by Kunal Kemmu.
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