‘Goodbye’ movie review: Overstays welcome

GoodbyeDir Vikas BahlCast Amitabh Bachchan Pavail GulatiRating 25For all intents and purposes this picture kicks off with the fact of the mother Neena Gupta who seems always so real having died last nightLeaving behind a set of children somewhere between youth and middleage with enough life of their own to have moved on from their parentshome already And a grieving father Amitabh Bachchan who loved his deceased wife unconditionallyThis is at its core a soft sensitive feature on death itself And while you survey the casual moments in the movie that usually follow such occasions in Hindu upperclass familiesmdasha local knowall uncletype PP Singh Ashish Vidyarthi giving gyan on the shastra or lsquoladies who lunchrsquo some finely handpicked ensemble extras here casually shifting between mourning and discussing the mundanemdashyou can somewhat sense this film comes from a lived experience of the writerdirector Vikas Bahl Queen Super 30Making this altogether a personal film albeit in the universalmainstreamtheatrical space Howwhere one goes beyond the anecdotal observational nuggets and the triggering event therefore is supposed to be the film that one engages with all through Think of it like say Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi 2020 or Pagglait 2021Also Read Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari pens heartwarming note for Faadu composer Santhosh NarayanLooking at the siblings here where one of them is the adopted kid seemingly closest to the foster parents and most shaken by the tragedymdashfor a second I thought maybe wersquore going somewhere towards Baghban 2003 which in turn was a lot of Avtar 1983 obviously not to be confused with the James Cameron spectacleNow I remember Baghban also starring Bachchan as a deeply affecting film mainly for an old man at the filmrsquos firstday firstshow plainly sobbing through it all while I sat there like a psychopath hardly as hit The moviersquos appeal at the boxoffice didnrsquot surprise me at allThe rich Punjabi family based in Chandigarh here look realistically restrainedmdashalthough Rashmika Mandanna scarcely sounds like from the Bhalla parivar and Pavail Gulati is sorted for sure These siblings arenrsquot quite on the same page The film though hardly veers towards the level of rhetoric and hyperbole to come anywhere close to BaghbanWhich is true for Bachchan himselfmdasha majestic presence soaking in the moment marinating in loss looking frustrated with his children still but taking them and the audience alongOver decades especially in his youth as an actor it goes without sayingmdash Bachchan has ended up spoiling some of his directors milking his presence so much that theyrsquove barely devoted enough thought to what should be on the screen when hersquos notTherein perhaps lies the reason for Good Bye overstaying its welcome Between songs to suit moodsoccasionmdashnightclub birthday poojabhajanmdashthere really is no plot after the death pretoldFor hours in the filmrsquos timeline the dead body remains on ice as friends family improvise on the ceremonies sitting around itmdashwith their laptop notebook sipping tea chatting chillinghellip This is meant to be in the dark humour spaceEventually the film descends into a religious documentary on postdeath rituals Almost turning into a polemic on faithversus sciencemdasharguing for both as two sides of the same coin Pointing out with full conviction that just because you donrsquot understand aspects of organised religion doesnrsquot mean itrsquos not validtrueWisdom collected over millennia mustnrsquot be discounted This goes well with the general positioning of a lsquofamily filmrsquomdasha genre that had moved to television at the turn of the century in the same way it is being said that OTTs are more the space for content aimed at selfexpressionIrreversibly enough death is death How we tend to deal with it is personal A film on the loss of a mother or an equivalent loved one is meant to move youmdashthere are obvious moments here that doThis is basic manipulation that a naked medium like the movies is capable of Take for instance that subtle shoescene after fatherrsquos death in The Namesake 2006 Only that grief is probably served best in a scene or two with enough leading up to it The question is how much must you stretch to continuously draw out the tearsIn that vein therersquos a strange unintended metamoment here when veteran actor Arun Bali 79 shows up on the screen on a ventilator playing Neena Guptarsquos ailing fatherMinutes before stepping into the theatre Irsquod learnt on Twitter that Bali had passed away His last digital release Laal Singh Chaddha 2022 had also just premiered on Netflix the night before Processing this news I was simultaneously watching him for the last time on the screen in this film RIP Good bye ArunAlso Read Alia Bhatt Ranbir Kapoors Rasiya Reprise version out now