Mitwa: Symbols of Love

Praveen Lulekar

 This space is increasingly becoming a platform for my literary experiments. And although my professional responsibilities discourage me from doing that, I still prefer to push envelopes. I am glad mformovie doesn’t hold a rigid institutional view and respects individual opinions, as long as they match the website’s overall sensibilities.

The reason I want to break patterns is that most films I watch no longer inspire me. There used to be a point in every film where I could say, ‘Yes, this is the perspective (negative or positive) I can carry forward.’ Good films or terribly bad ones, have several such points. Unfortunately, the films we are making these days do not give me even a single moment that triggers analysis. They rather make me numb.

Let’s get done with the story part first – Shivam Sarang (Swwapnil Joshi) is a flamboyant playboy. He runs a successful chain of resorts in Goa along with Avni (Prarthana Behre), who is one-sidedly in love with Shivam. Enter Nandini (Sonalee) and Shivam falls in love. He first proposes Nandini to be in a platonic relationship with him but then wants to marry her. Nandini, with affection for Shivam and a contradicting past, adds complications.

I can go on about how Mitwa apes Bollywood or how its dialogues are burdened with romantic realisations (Guy: Prem kaay aahe? Gal: Je tujha majhyawar naahi). To prove my non-existing worth with technical points, I can also elaborate how incorrectly the camera chooses its focus in many scenes. There is the dramatic background score, unreal twists and a lead pair that refuses to spark any chemistry. And yes, the beautiful Behre who brings in moments of sense with her ease.

The more important point I want to talk about is, as audience and as people, what our ideas of love and romance are. After all, it is the incomplete understanding of this immature notion in us that inspires such films.  

First and foremost - our love is loaded with self-pity. We fall in love and often are unable to express it. Because love is something beyond words. Unfortunately, the other person is unable to realise this divine abstract. The result – devaa tujhya gaabharyala umbraach naahi... We have other reasons to be diljale (especially boys) – she likes another guy, she can’t break an earlier commitment, she is just a heart-breaker...

The divinity takes another form when we understand love is about sacrifice. So a girl marries a guy even though he is fatally ill. Or in Mitwa’s case, Avni is a model of how innocent and selfless love can be. She easily gives up Shivam for Nandini. Behre makes it work with her performance, but with Joshi and Sonalee, you start feeling is it all worth it?

Nandini’s past – Ashwin, is another such case. He is brain dead but is alive just to live up to his commitment that he will never leave Nandini. It doesn’t end there – he cries when Shivam goes to meet him and leaves his praan when he discovers Nandini is now in secure hands. I remind you 

again, he is brain dead!

I am a poetic person and would have loved this if this was a legend told as poetically. All this happens in a supposedly modern world. Our modern hero checks out women before he hires them (for professional purposes) and has plans of having undefined relationships with them. And then, there are songs where winds blow and pallus flow. Yes, Bollywood romance – our ultimate definition of love.

Please forgive my fatigue. But I sincerely believe good movies are reflection of our lives and even our dreams. Beaches, slow motions and teddy bears are only the symbols of romanticism. Let’s move inward now. Where real feelings reside. The audience is ready, test them.    

m4m says: Watch at your own risk 

Posted in: