It's really tough to critically analyze a film like JAL which certainly is one of the most beautifully shot Hindi projects, bringing to you the picturesque visuals of a difficult location of Rann of Kutch impressively and also talks about a thoughtful subject woven around the scarcity of water (Jal) in the region. The film has undoubtedly been made with a great amount of courage, pain and discomfort suffered by the entire team shooting in that painstaking location of Kutch, like no other film till date. And with few highly believable performances, it surely remains an achievement of a sort in film-making too considering the extreme situations of its on-location shoot and more.
But then why it is tough to write about such a well-crafted movie? Unfortunately that is so because despite having all the technical merits, JAL fails to express any specific purpose or idea to its target audience in any form. It neither comes out as a thought provoking cinema made with an appreciable concern nor is able to make any kind of emotional connect with the viewers as required. Moreover the director quite uselessly goes on to add many sexual references and deliberate skin show too in an otherwise decent story progression which confuses the viewer further about the film's actual aim.
In addition many immature insertions bring it down to the mediocre level after a while, like the fresh facial make-up of Purab playing a hard core villager in the desert, Purab wearing jeans, T-shirt in one scene and again the villager's dress in the next without any kind of reasoning given, the silly or unexplainable hiding of all jewels in a pit dug in a barren land with a clear mark on it by a person who is intelligent enough to get a government job, the bizarre idea of buying the big machine which is owned by the government without thinking about the cost of fuel required to use it, over the top finesse in the art direction and then the cheap comedy thrown in just to cater the commercial needs of the project with all those disgusting remarks made on the foreigner lady.
The long first half of the film saying nothing about its actual storyline plays with your patience level quite carelessly and then all the western sounds used in its background score (of a film made on a rural setup) force you to re-think about all the festival logos displayed on its publicity posters.
In simple words, JAL begins with the Camera leading it from the front and the Cinematography continues to remain the only worth watching feature of the film right till the end. The interesting ensemble of actors like Purab Kohli, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Kirti Kulhari, Mukul Dev, Yashpal Sharma, Ravi Gossain, Rahul Singhand the old man Habib Azmi try their best to give something extra to the project doing the hard work sincerely. But actually its not the actors or the technical team which is to be blamed here for the end result not reaching out to the viewers as it should have. Instead it's the director Girish Malik and his writers who are the main game spoilers here as they miss out a unique opportunity to make an exceptional never before kind of Hindi film with an interesting and great story idea. So even if the film might have won praises in several festival circuits as quoted, for me it didn't have any of those remarkable sensibilities usually seen in all the festival movies.
Still there are two reasons, why I cannot straight away slam the movie just like another Friday release as stated below.
Firstly JAL does come up as a rare visual delight canning the deserted stretch and scorched land of Rann of Kutch like never before witnessed on the screen for such a long length (more than two hours). Yes, a better script surely could have made this spectacular achievement work in a much brighter way but that doesn't take away any credit from the DoP Sunita Radia as the talented master behind the camera.
Secondly JAL talks about two interesting novel story ideas which is one thing, Hindi Cinema is desperately looking for in the current times. The first plot revolves around the tussle between human ability of finding the water in the desert by their traditional ways verses the big machine looking for the same with all the advanced equipment. And the other raises a very important question that whether water is required more essentially for the visiting foreign birds in a specific season or for the dying dehydrated people living in the villages in the same region.
Unfortunately, the film fails to emphasis any of the above plots with a complete focus as it should have and thus remains a mostly lost or confused attempt made on these two great social thoughts with a splendid cinematography. So with a heavy heart I am forced to give only average ratings to this fine attempt largely gone wrong and you can still go for it if you are solely interested in watching some dazzling camera-work alone brilliantly capturing the Rann of Kutch.
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