(Riya Singh, Intern Journalist): Watching Dil Bechara is a strange feeling of inadvertence. Actor Sushant Singh Rajput plays a terminally ill character in the movie, Immanuel Rajkumar Junior or Manny, and we know how this disaster will turn out due to the source material of the script, The Fault of Our Stars. The film shows him as a young boy who is conscious that the end is close but perseveres to survive at the moment. He tells his girlfriend Kizie Basu (Sanjana Sanghi), who has thyroid cancer, to do the same.
The film, however, lacks depth and the sense of fragility at the center of such a story. In addition to scenes and characters, the film also borrows several dialogs (albeit translated) from the original. It rarely addresses the philosophical issues of death, life, and destiny and how to grapple with an inevitable ending that these two characters have been dealing with almost their entire lives. While Hazel Grace ‘s character in The Fault in Our Stars irrationally holds on to the ending of a novel for purpose, Kizie is given an album, but the movie doesn’t do much to it. Only their journey to Paris is precipitous and somewhat contradictory, making Dil Bechara’s coming-of-age component its weakest connection.
While Manny is supposed to be the one who teaches Kizie to find hope and fulfillment, even if her days are numbered, he finds himself as a caricature and is not given sufficient support to be as he is. But there is more to the movie than Manny. It’s about Sushant, and the life he already lived. Had it been in different circumstances, perhaps the way one looked at this movie would have been a lot different. But it’s hard to look at Manny, the character, and not, Sushant, the actor, and be part of that utterly strange experience where reality is much more moving than fiction.
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