Daily Times

Amir Mohiuddin’s ‘Rangreza’ has three big problems: Urwa Hocane, who cannot act; Gohar Rasheed, who acts a little too much; and Bilal Ashraf, who does not make any effort to act.

The three actors turn in the worst of performances in ‘Rangreza’, making poor acting one of the many areas of weakness of the film. The others include writing, direction, editing, cinematography, art direction, costume, sound, choreography, and music. ‘Rangreza’ is a horrendous – and horrific – train wreck, if ever there was one, and as uncomfortable for filmgoers to watch as it should have been for its cast, crew and makers to deliver.

Ali Zain is the son of a rich politician who makes really bad, popular music. He falls in love with Reshmi who hails from a family of qawwals that seem to never practice or perform qawwali. Reshmi is engaged to her cousin, Waseem Wallay, a volatile and disturbed musician who plays dholak that produces the sound of anaal. The love triangle between the three characters forms the shaky basis of the film’s story. It results in a number of hokey situations that are meant to be explosive but die down with a whimper.

Urwa Hocane fails as the leading lady in ‘Rangreza’. Her focus is on looking good – an area in which she often succeeds – and not on acting well. She totally fails at communicating the distress caused by Ali Zain’s arrival in her life. The caprice of her disdain for Ali Zain changing to love is inexplicable, both because it is written poorly and because she is unable to communicate requisite emotions. She tries very hard to emote but, in doing so, forgets her goals as an actor. Her turn as an actor in ‘Rangreza’ is a dismal, if somewhat pretty, failure.

Bilal Ashraf is a handsome man who looks very good in ‘Rangreza’. Unfortunately, he has no histrionic skills and is visibly uncomfortable in front of the camera. He can neither communicate confidence nor vulnerability as Zain. He uses a single expression – as stiff as his always gelled, perfectly coiffed hair – to show every emotion from infatuation to love, anger to frustration, and confidence to strength. His portrayal of a man in love – from a perfunctory meet cute with Reshmi to a trite conclusion of the romance – is painful to watch, difficult to digest, and impossible to buy. Ashraf is an exceedingly good-looking and well-dressed young man, but he has the emotional range of a mannequin. Acting is not a vocation meant for Ashraf. Modelling, perhaps, but certainly not acting.

Gohar Rasheed’s overblown performance as Waseem is as jarring to the senses as the sound of nails on a board. It is impossible to figure the character out and not because it is complex, intricate, or layered, but because it is poorly written, horribly directed, and awfully executed. Waseem’s struggles, internal conflicts, motivations, desires and emotions are never revealed; audiences are expected to take Rasheed’s overacting at face value and never ask any questions. In each and every scene, he hams it up to a degree that his performance becomes a discordant note in the narrative. Rasheed’s studied, synthetic rage is hollow and meaningless. He has no grasp on the tone of the scene and no understanding of what is needed of him, as an actor. He chews the scenery aggressively and spits it for other actors to pick up. His maniacal take on Waseem’s character is an utter and complete failure.

‘Rangreza’ was promoted a musical but, strangely, the film has only six mostly bad songs. The inexperienced Hamza Akram does what most would have thought impossible. He gets the great Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad qawwals to sing a qawwali, “Balamwa”, that is poorly written, composed, and constructed. The celebrated qawwals, who had created great music with their qawwalis, in the ‘Reluctant Fundamentalist’ and ‘Ho Mann Jahan’, are forced to sing a song that is well below their standards and an aberration in the world of qawwali. Jay Ali’s songs “Rangreza” and “Bulleya”, are tired, dull and tepid.

Qurram Hussain’s “Bagiya Mein Mor” has no novelty and sound like more than a hundred Bollywood songs from the last few decades. “Kalu” is, for lack of a more appropriate word, atrocious. Sung by Abida Parveen and Asrar, “Phool Khil Jayein” is a tad better than the other songs but nothing special. The vocals of the two singers are overlaid on top of each other clumsily, the percussion pattern is unfitting, and Abida Parveen singing lacks novelty and sparkle. All songs of the famous songstress have come to sound the same in recent years. “Phool Khil Jayein” is no exception.

Rangreza’s screenplay is haphazard, unevenly paced, and messy. In addition to the central love triangle, it touches upon many areas – the clash of cultures between the rich and the poor, the hypocrisy of politicians, the fragility of a woman’s honour among the petite bourgeoisie, sibling rivalry, the lack of professionalism in the media – but does not explore even one satisfactorily. Numerous set-ups are allowed to sprout in the movie but none is allowed the benefit of a payoff.

‘Rangreza’ includes two incredibly disputatious sequences.

The first is a song in which Waseem dances with transgenders to celebrate the birth of the son of a character that does not exist in the film. The song and its picturisation is not only bad; it is also in bad taste. There is no reason to have transgenders in the song. They seem to have been added for comic effect alone. This is both deplorable and disgraceful.

The second strange sequence is a bizarre dream scene in which Waseem appears as a king, Reshmi as his consort, and Ali as a doomed lover, in chains. Totally different, in tone and tenor, from the rest of the film, the dream sequence adds nothing to the narrative of ‘Rangreza’.

The two sequences were probably included in ‘Rangreza’ to add life to the film’s dull storyline. They fail to do so. Very obviously acts of desperation, they indicate a total lack of talent on the part of both the writer and the director.

There are rumours that, after its disastrous premiere on Tuesday, 30 minutes were cut out from Rangreza’s original length of 175 minutes. That probably was a wise move on the part of the filmmakers but they could have done one better by being kind to filmgoers and pitching the remaining 145 minutes, as well.

Alas, they did not do that.

The writer is based in Dallas and writes about culture, history and the arts. He Tweets at @allyadnan and can be reached at allyadnan@theafterhoursgroup.com

Published in Daily Times, December 24th 2017.