Tribhanga: All that's crazy is not cool

 

(Image courtesy: glamsham.com)

First things first. According to the God of all things (the internet), Tribhanga is an Odissi dance pose where the dancer’s body bends in three different points; the knee, the hip and the shoulders. The three different points are meant to symbolize the three protagonists whose lives are “imperfect, yet beautiful” in the film ‘Tribhanga’ which is directed by Renuka Shahane. I felt the necessity to explain the title of the film because in its entire run time of 95 minutes, nobody bothers to tell the audience what Tribhanga actually means, despite a lot of needless tedious spoonfeeding and Kajol's Odissi-loving character. 

As is evident from the trailer, Tribhanga follows the lives of three generations, author Nayantara Apte (Tanvi Azmi), her daughter, actress/dancer Anuradha Apte (Kajol), and her <no profession mentioned> granddaughter Masha (Mithila Palkar). The rest is a tale told by the trailer; whatever you thought would happen in the movie after watching the trailer does happen.

It is incredible how a film with some of the most effortless actors in the country can seem so contrived and (I hate to say it) staged. The film doesn’t engulf you within it; there is a wide disconnect despite the relatable characters. The three actors, quite literally go in three different directions; Ms Azmi is confined to her long, thoughtful monologues, which, I must say are delivered beautifully, Mithila Palkar is the demure daughter-in-law, balanced and nice, and Kajol, aah, well, more on her later. Together these characters make the elegant Tribhanga pose look like the twisted and painful yoga pretzel pose, which is also how one feels while watching the film. Only less painful than the film is watching Kunal Roy Kapur, otherwise, a goofy, charming guy, spew out dialogues in purist Hindi. He looks uncomfortable, delivers the dialogue in an uncomfortable, jarring manner, and all in all, makes the viewer uncomfortable. To quote Kajol in the film, “ it isn’t pretty”.

Here I must digress and mention Kajol, for she is the major chink in the armour crick in the neck of Tribhanga. She is, for a good part of the film, loud, unnecessarily abusive and a total misfit in a role that required her to be less Anjali and more Simran. It’s not as though she is incapable of range - she was the coy Simran in DDLJ, the scheming Isha in Gupt and the righteous Zooni in Fanaa - yet no one can see past the brash, over the top Anjali from K3G. A pity, because in the rare subtle moments in Tribhanga, Kajol does use her face to emote and not just her voice.I also take offense with her character - when will the day come when a woman’s modernity isn’t portrayed on cinema by her smoking, drinking, abusing and sleeping around with men? Sheesh!

I’m not really sure what I feel after watching Tribhanga. I read that it was initially supposed to be a Marathi film made on a much smaller scale before a big production house picked it up for Netflix. I kinda wish it had stayed a smaller Marathi film. It had all the elements - fantastic actors, a decent storyline, great shots of suburban Mumbai, a predictable yet beautiful end - and yet it fails to impress. This Tribhanga is, indeed, ‘tedhi, medhi and crazy’, but in a major pain in the neck kinda way.