Gandhari movie review: The moment you see a happy family in a train compartment, with a little girl and her big doll, you know something wicked this way comes.

The girl vanishes, and her increasingly distraught parents, Bani (Taapsee Pannu) and Gokul (Ishwak Singh) find no help from the local police in Joypurra (fictional, of course), somewhere in Bengal.

This is the kind of small town we see in streaming shows, as constructed as their plots, sequence after sequence filled with loud background music trying to stand in for tension because nothing on screen cuts it, either because we’ve been inundated with similar stuff, or we simply can’t buy any of it. Or both.

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Taking a pointer or two from an array of series inflated by local myths and colourful processions, ‘Gandhari’ is about a child sex trafficking ring (strike one for unoriginality), run by devilish characters (strike two for ditto), upended by, who else but the ultimate saviour, the mother. No strikes needed here, because mums are the best, right?

Directed by Devashish Makhija whose previous ‘Cheetpatakadumpa’ made solid use of its leads’ feminist energy, and written by Kanika Dhillon whose last outing with regular leading lady Taapsee Pannu was the well-done manohar kahani Phir Aayi Haseen Dilruba, Gandhari feels as if it has slipped between the cracks: it is neither impactful nor believable.

The supporting cast — even the husband, played by Ishwak Singh, is clearly only one amongst the ensemble — is reduced to doing their bit, following Bani’s frantic search for her lost daughter, as she becomes a veritable Gandhari, suffering from a temporary reduction of vision. ‘Maa se bada yoddhaa koi na hoye’, is the helpful accompanying dialogue.

 

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Mita Vasisht (here because she was in the last edition of Delhi Crime, also on child trafficking?) shows our intrepid Bani the way, which is blocked by a bunch of people, each of whom are made to do eye-roll things : a social worker-type (Chhaya Kadam) is too helpful, a dank-looking orphanage head (Swastika Bannerjee) skulks about, as does a van driver (Chandan Roy) lugging suspicious sacks.

Wait, there’s more. Jatin Sarna is a cop cracking orders. Prashant Naryanan shows up to up the menace quotient. A devi named Chaumukhi, and a demon named Magrasur join the party; and just to make everything deeply metaphorical, a group of behrupiyas, faces masked and painted, swarm everywhere, but like everything else, leave little impact.





Gandhari movie cast: Taapsee Pannu, Ishwak Singh, Jatin Sarna, Mita Vasisht, Swastika Bannerjee, Chandan Roy, Prashant Narayanan


Gandhari movie director: Devashish Makhija


Gandhari movie rating: 1.5 stars