‘Kalank’ Critics’ Review: Star Cast but No Substance

Is the three-hour run-time justified?

Film: Kalank
Director: Abhishek Verman
Cast: Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, Madhuri Dixit, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sanjay Dutt, Sonakshi Sinha

Read excerpts of reviews from Kalank here:

“If it had all come together the way it was intended to, this would have been a great throwback to the time Hindi cinema would make movies when time was expended in building characters and quirks, when the plot was buoyed by the presence of stars. But sadly, the promise Kalank holds out is frittered away in its inordinate length, which you start feeling quite soon after it opens. The pace slows so often that you are left admiring the period detailing from the 1944-45-46 years, in the movie’s havelis and ‘bazaars’ and newspaper offices. That and the slack treatment: a film like this should also have the tools to ramp up the drama and be consistent with it.”

Shubhra Gupta, The Indian Express

“The attempt to map melodramatic conventions onto the tragedy of the Partition is as ambitious as it is tricky. In Earth, Deepa Mehta skilfully navigated the ways in which, given the perfect storm, heartbreak could get magnified to monstrous proportions and previously convivial neighbours could turn on one other. Kalank is, however, too inchoate to strike a balance between the personal and the political. It works neither as an unusual love triangle nor a contemporary addition to the Partition genre.”

Nandini Ramnath, Scroll

“You want desperately to get up close and personal with the characters on the screen, feel their pulse, hear their breath, and gain a deeper sense of their sighs and sorrows, but the film’s overwhelming surface gloss becomes an impediment. It prevents any direct connection from taking shape between an audience dazzled by the beauty of the visual compositions and the tormented dramatis personae seen in the tainted light of an unhappy dawn.”

Saibal Chatterjee, NDTV

“In Kalank‘s scheme of things, Roop symbolises undiluted goodness, a young Mother India figure of sorts, torn between love/passion and duty, somehow always staying on the righteous path, never meaning anyone harm, an innocent victim of her circumstances. Dev is pure as the driven snow, a man fighting for the greater good of the country even while his combustible Muslim antagonist worries about what is presented as petty personal interests.  Whether by intent or unthinkingly is not clear, but Kalank’s screenplay serves to project big business as the saviour of the nation while self-employment and small enterprise are dispensable for the greater good.”

Anna MM Vetticad, Firstpost