by Shreehari H
A disgruntled IT professional is in the midst of brushing his teeth, when he pauses to examine his reflection in the mirror. The image that stares back at him is one with hollow eyes, eyes shorn of both hope and emotional fulfillment; he tries to force his face into something that resembles a half-hearted smile, as if to remind himself that it is easy to get caught in a vortex of ones own despair. The effort, however, proves to be a significant deterrent: he ends up reverting to his hangdog, despondent self.
Avinash Purohit (played by a wonderful Dulquer Salman) indulges himself in the occasional game of solitaire (and a nap) when his boss isnt around. His stooping upper body as a reluctant customer relations executive (and a merit-lister in software engineering to boot) reveals an all-too telling story of its own. His superior frequently addresses him as a waste of space and reminds him of how he wouldnt be working there if it werent for the generosity of the formers dad. Aadat ho gaya, Avinash replies by way of explanation, when a colleague asks him whether he is truly happy with his job ironical, given how he has just joined a Bangalore-based company where signboards with the warning never forget you can be replaced are employed to great effectand he comes across as a protagonist whose existence is humdrum and monotonous. This is a man who finds his true calling in fine art photography, you see; a man who would much rather be dealing with portraits than he would with pseudocode.
An accident, however, changes everything: a bus full of pilgrims headed towards Gangotri doesnt reach its destination, two corpses get swapped with each other in the process, and much mayhem ensues. Avinash falls back upon his loose-tongued friend, Shaukat (played by a marvelous Irrfan Khan) to ferry their unintended package towards Kochi. When an angsty, rebellious teenager, Tanya (played by Mithila Palkar), a girl who happens to be united with Avinash in tragedy, gets thrown into the mix, what follows is a moving, heartfelt tale of three inherently discontented people who not only end up battling their inner demons but also contemplate their respective worldviews.
Coffins are not the only burdens being borne by the protagonists in this film. In a wise filmmaking decision, we never really see the incident that triggered these events in the first place, and the beauty here, as is usually the case in all road trip movies, lies in the unravelling of these characters during the course of this journey. Towards the end, an emboldened, emancipated Avinash even ends up losing his glasses, as if to underline how weights both literal and metaphorical have been lifted off his shoulders. The performances in Karwaan are uniformly impressive, save for Mithila Palkar who is earnest but visibly raw. Dulquer Salman is terrific in his first-ever role in a Hindi film, and he has a certain modest, affable quality to him that grounds the story with emotional heft.
However, it is Irrfan Khan, who ends up leaving the biggest impression here, delivering a superlative performance that greatly benefits from some crackling dialogue written by Bejoy Nambiar. South India ka Mandela hai tu, an irate Irrfan tells Dulquer at one point, even as he goes on to say, main dahej bhi doonga aapko pukka when unsuccessfully trying to proposition a potential love interest whom he is not able to take his eyes off. Nambiar, a native of Kannur himself, understands this milieu well, and there is a delightfully meta moment when Dulquer tries to explain things in Hindi to a character who only understands Malayalam.
Veteran cinematographer Avinash Aruns beautifully composed frames of the countryside complement Anurag Saikia and Imaad Shahs background score wonderfully well. The film only occasionally trips when it forces Malayali characters to speak in a painfully forced Hindi accent, or when it ends up resolving a few conflicts a little too easily. Nevertheless, for the most part, this RSVP Movies production marries humour with heart in just the right proportions.
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Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Shreehari H is a lover of films and an even greater lover of writing.