Tender and soft forest flame : My quick take on ‘Gulmohor’ (Disney hotstar)
Drama filled with complexities of human relationships amongst various characters staying under a single roof as a joint family, headed by a matriarch played very well by Sharmila Tagore. the real strength of the movie is its dialogues and its cast. Manoj Bajpai has probably given his best performance till date, and he is ably supported by Simran who plays his wife. You also have the life of pi*Suraj playing the son of Manoj Vajpayee in Gulmohor.  it is nice to see veteran Amol Palekar in front of camera nowadays (farzi and now gulmohor)
We have seen earlier that interns who work with great directors, do come up with a product that has lots of influence of the mentors movie, like N Chandra who was assisting Mere Apne, later on went on to make hard-hitting Ankush, similarly here Rahul Chittella who assisted Mira Nair in Monsoon wedding shows off lots of Mira Nair influence while writing and directing the movie.
The movie deals with different kinds of human relationships and conflicts which is simmering within various characters living under a single roof. I loved the caustic chemistry between father and son, where both are right in their thinking yet their thoughts are tangent. Director does a good job in not making such relationships very melodramatic. Even a negative character is not shown as typical ‘dark’ character which is case in any HINDI movie, but he has given a greyish shade to character.
These kinds of family drama movies have ‘binary’ kind of reaction, either you find it very पकाऊँ kind of stuff which is not going anywhere, or you will just love it as you will see yourself in the plot, hence you will laugh and cry with the characters of the movie.
Let me confess that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie but for it's preachy gyaan on lesbianism. I am not against this kind of choice of life, but I strongly feel let us keep ‘mothers’ away from such roles. ( same mistake they did in Madhuri’s Majaa Ma). I also did not get why movie was called ‘Gulmohor’ ? A बरगद का पेड़ would have been more apt , with each of the branch reaching out to ground and finding its own roots as it grows big.
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