D-daY movie (2013)

Film: D-Day
Cast: Rishi Kapoor, Irrfan, Arjun Rampal, Huma Qureshi, Shruti Hassan Sriswara, Aakaash Dahiya, Nasser and Chandan Roy Sanyal;
Director: Nikhil Advani;
Rating: ****

Fragrant pencils and the stench of blood... Irrfan's character identifies flavoured pencils with his undying love for his son even when his life is soaked in the blood of traitors and other modern-day heroes. Funny, how two entirely disparate experiences can co-exist in a work of art!

And make no mistake, Nikhil Advani's sixth feature film is an acutely accomplished work of art. It's a thriller, yes. About the enforced extradition of a Dawood-like gangster. But what I came away with was a haunting love story between a mysterious Indian intelligence agent and a Pakistani sex worker, both wounded and scarred for life. She in ways that we can see. He in intangible ways. But pain, at the end of the day, is pain. It's what binds together the sex-worker and the ex-army man.

Shot in an expertly constructed brothel sets with the crowded colours of lurid sex suggesting the tragedy of lives lived in borrowed beds, the scenes between Arjun Rampal and Shruti Hassan are punctured by piercing silences and a haunting melody about love, loss and incomplete lives sung by Rekha Bharadwaj.

Later, much later, the girl is tortured to painful death by a sadistic butcher, gleefully played by Chandan Roy Sanyal.

In one of the most innovative editing techniques applied to a Hindi cinema (editors Aarif Sheikh and Unni Krishnan can take a bow), we see the scarred prostitute's torture and death through Arjun Rampal eyes as though he were there when it happened, when he was not.

And in the background a haunting Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy song Alvida plays with assertive evocativeness, reminding us that the end of love is always death.

The love story could have been the entire script of Advani's film. But D-Day – an odd title since the antagonist is not named Dawood - has a lot more to say, and it says it with in a tone of unfussy enrapturing elan that invites us into its midst without using gimmicky methods of enticement.

The screenplay by Advani, Ritesh Shah and Suresh Nair constructs a collage of characters hell-bent on a collision course. Though rigorously researched, the erudition sits easily, spontaneously and unobtrusively on Advani's narration.

The story of a bunch of RAW agents on a mission in Pakistan to nab India's Most Wanted is told in a tone that favours a detached distance from the proceedings while ensuring we see each character's life in prismatic close-ups.

Though a deeply patriotic film, D-Day indulges in no flag-waving. The Indian flag makes one guest appearance and that too at the end. God bless Manoj Kumar.

Download Link - D day Scam 1 (2013)
                          D day Scam 2 (2013)