sagnik basu – Google

Dil Bechara is Sushant Singh Rajput's swan-song and deserves a viewing that transcends ratings and stars. This will be a cinematic experience more than the validation of critics and commerce. Call it fate or something else that Rajput's last film is based on a tearjerker that left people choked after it ended. Similar thoughts run through the mind while watching Mukesh Chhabra's directorial debut, Dil Bechara, where two people, united by destiny and circumstances, meet and fall in love. The couple has the most unique names we have heard on the celluloid.Rajput is Manny and Sanghi is named Kizie. When they both meet each other, Manny asks what her name means, she says, "Someone who doesn't leave easily." Just like any other Bollywood romance, their story is staged with multiple montages of madness, mirth, and mayhem. As the narrative proceeds, we see their passion ignite and romance becoming a lot more intimate. For all those who have seen the original and who knows how this will all end, the lump in the throat is expected. Characters with terminal illnesses in films are driven by hope and happiness, and they thrive to fill the air with joy and jubilance with their feistiness and free-spirited demeanour. It's hard to forget Anand from Anand or Aman from Kal Ho Naa Ho. Rajput joins the coveted list. Here's an actor who has the audacity to take on any role and blend into its psyche. He has been given dialogues that echo the sentiments he had in real. There's a scene where he's having a conversation with Kizie's father, played by Saswata Chatterjee, he says he has a lot of dreams but cannot fulfil all of them. There's another bit where he declares heroically, "I'm a fighter, I will fight." It's hard not to be gutted while these scenes play out. Manny is a character one would want to know and befriend, want to console and converse with. Manny also gets some endearing scenes with Kizie's mother, the wonderfully affectionate Swastika Mukherjee. Every time the two sit with each other, there's both awkwardness and amusement in the atmosphere. Coming to Kizie, she is a fragile and delightful soul, but there's something ferocious about her too. Sanghi has an endearing presence and infuses her role with piquancy and panache. The film is seen through her eyes, she's the narrator of the story, and she sticks to her name and battles till the end and braves all her hardships and hurdles. And that's Bollywood for you, filled with romance, passion, music, and a happy ending. Dil Bechara fails to tick the last box, a voiceover by Sanghi's character, in the beginning, informs us how she has always craved for a Bollywoodish life, and how brutal reality can be, how it's impossible for life to be a replica of a Bollywood film, how there cannot be a happy ending. As Dil Bechara reaches its climax, her words begin to echo in mind, this is the last time we see Rajput on the screen, and even if films continue seeing happy endings, a part of us will always be jolted that someone from Bollywood couldn't see one, only leaving memories for us behind, and we embraced them, with love!