So brava to the heroine, Roop (Alia Bhatt), who finally gets around to asking him, “Why can you never speak plainly?”
For Abhishek Varman, the writer-director, the plain would seem to be the enemy of the good. Everything here is extravagant: the swirling camera moves; the hundreds of color-coordinated dancing extras with stomping heels and jingling ankle bracelets; and the sets, which are some of the most eye-popping this side of Cecil B. DeMille.
The story, too, is maximalist. Set in 1945, the movie takes place near Lahore, with Partition looming. The hero, Zafar (Varun Dhawan) — a Romeo in a league of his own, a song tells us — is a Muslim, who harbors resentments because his parents abandoned him as a child. When not dancing down the street singing (“who cares about riches?”), or riding wild bulls, Zafar, a blacksmith, hammers metal into swords, his gym-toned torso gleaming.
Zafar falls for Roop, but she’s married to Dev, who also has another, more beloved wife. (She’s dying, so she picked a successor.) The unhappy Roop becomes a reporter at the newspaper Dev owns; Zafar becomes her guide to the colorful doings of the disreputable part of town. In Varman’s hands, that neighborhood is as lush as any reputable one, its clean lanes opening into grand havelis with dancing girls inside and lotus-clogged waterways out back.
This kind of fantasy-spectacle is Varman’s forte, not storytelling. When the singing and dancing and action stop, which is less often than you might think, so does “Kalank.” Dialogue scenes can be static, stand-and-deliver affairs. And Varman leaves the actors at sea; when the script calls for character complexity, the result usually reads as incoherence.
Partition, here, is mostly just a looming backdrop. But you still may wonder about the movie’s politics. “Kalank” takes place near Lahore, in what was northwest India and is now Pakistan, so the Hindus, not the Muslims, are the film’s threatened minority. And the disruptive element is a group of Muslims whose anger Zafar has stoked, though for reasons that have nothing to do with politics or religion.
That’s because, in good Bollywood fashion, the personal is mythical more than political — and even the political is mythical. Zafar, though an orphan, isn’t parentless. His mother is a famous Muslim courtesan and singer, his father a Hindu. Roop is a Hindu, too, as is Zafar’s half brother, with whom he unwittingly bonds as fireworks burst in the background. In sum, Zafar is an Indian fellow — who contains multitudes of contradictions. Is there a place for him in the about-to-be Pakistan? In India? In a different movie, these might be burning questions.
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‘Kalank’ is not rated. In Hindi, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 46 minutes.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.