Prague (Hindi 2013)

There are various ways to tell a story and it is upto the director to decide which way a story is going to be narrated.  Should I keep it simple so that the junta (general public) can understand it and appeal to the masses? Or should I make it into a complicated one that has so many layers that the audience is left to decipher the story.  Ashish R Shukla chooses the latter approach for his first full length feature.

Is there anything wrong with the approach that he has taken? Absolutely not.  It only puts a significant emphasis on the quality of narration and script.  The story, conceived by Rohit Khaitan, found its way to the screen through Ashish Shukla and Sumit Saxena with some help from Akshendra Mishra and Vijay Verma.  Ergo, you have a situation of, “Too many cooks almost spoiling the broth”.

There are moments in Prague where you are impressed with the attention to detail, the narration, the screenplay and the script being consistent.  But unfortunately, there are quite a few moments that make you cringe.  Like when Elena (Elena Kazan) is repeatedly calling Chandan (Chandan Roy Sanyal), the name flashes as “Elena” and the camera cuts to her at a PCO. Also, it is never established as to how Elena and Chandan fall in love.

By now, you would have figured out that in some ways Prague is a love story.  Thankfully, it is much more than that.  Chandan is an architect who has been given an opportunity to visit the “City of a Hundred Spires”.  He has a massive crush on Shubhangi (Sonia Bindra) and he wants to be a cool dude like his not so trustworthy friend Gulshan (Mayank Kumar).

Chandan barely manages to build a relationship with Shubhangi when he finds her in bed with Gulshan.  Gulshan is also Chandan’s partner for the Prague project.  Chandan nevertheless moves to Prague where he meets Elena (Elena Kazan), a Czech girl who is fluent in Hindi, Bengali and Russian (all facts well established in the script). But with Gulshan’s arrival in Prague, that relationship also starts getting strained.

I could have given some more details about the story but that would be a huge spoiler.  There are several layers that Ashish Shukla peels off over the period of the movie.  He has kept the movie to under 2 hours.  But I did believe that some more of the psychedelic sequences could have been chopped off to get it down to a tight 90 minutes.  The extra 20 minutes leaves you a bit impatient.

Elena Kazan seems to be quite busy of late with 2 releases in one month.  Good for her I say and as mentioned even in John Day, she continues to show promise.  Chandan Sanyal is also equally good but quite forced with his use of English – an aspect that could have been avoided when scenes related to India were shot.  It didn’t seem natural.

All through the narration, I was reminded of Dev D only to realize through research that Ashish R Shukla directed the “Making of Dev D”.  The resemblance is unmistakable.  The camera work is similar to Dev D and actually quite good as well.  Overall, a good watch.  Much better than what I expected it to be.  Can watch it but be patient and go with an open mind.  6.5 on 10.

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEtOXnXSeew.