My Brother Nikhil :
Director :
Onir
Cast : Juhi Chawla, Sanjay Suri, Purab Kohli.
My Brother Nikhil is that rare
and remarkable thing :an understand, heart-wrenchingly moving
Bollywood melodrama. Debutant director Onir
creates a lump in your throat with his first few scenes and
then, with a finely crafted script and first-rate actors, holds
you between teary smiles and all-out bawling. It is both exhilarating
and exhausting cinema.
Told mostly through in-camera conversations and flashbacks,
My Brother Nikhil goes where few
mainstream movies have gone before: AIDS and homosexuality:
a loving relationship between two men; and a bewildered mother
and father who flee at first but then eventually accept their
dead son’s lover as their own child.
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Onir
treads lightly so that no point is hammered in and no emotion
underlined. The actors, without exception, follow his
cue so
the tragedy never descends into bathos. The pacing occasionally
lags but My Brother Nikhil is
a triumph for its cast, crew and for us, the audience.
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