Anil Sharma’s Vanvaas: Chaotic Take on Dementia and Family Betrayal

Trust Anil Sharma to go berserk. Give him patriotism, nothing is impossible. Give him human relationships; the dividing line between good and bad is screamingly sharp. Dementia and you have a no holds barred zone for work. He is thus on an incorrigible excursion. Characteristic grotesque is the lingua-familiar with Sharmaji.

As old as the hills (Meherbaan, Thodisi Bewafai, Ghar Ho To Aisa) the erring family and the aging dependent patriarch have been stretched challenging the laws of elasticity at Bollywood. Just when you thought that the formula has outlived its utility you have a new label, poorly designed and apologetically marketed in Vanvaas.

The film starts with Vimala (Khushboo Sunder) romancing Deepak Tyagi (Nana Patekar). Cut in a minute or so to the present when the grey-beard Tyagi is shown his predeceased wife. Tyagi has three family children, their spouses and some irrelevant grandchildren pottering the Simla landscape at Vimala Sadan. The large family is inclusive of Somu and wife Manjari (Hemant Kher and Bhakti Rathode), Bablu and Aanchan (Kettan Singh and Sunchri Dixit) and the youngest couple Chutka and Pooja (Paritosh Tripathi and Shruti Marathe)

Also in the pie is friend lawyer Gautam Gupta (Rajesh Sharma) who is a rare honest bone in the Tyagi household. The family conspires to get the nagging patriarch out of the scene and sell the family property.

They all plan a trip to Varanasi, take advantage of the dementia, leave him in the crowd, use an abettor in the local pujari Pandit Shukla (Veerendra Saxena). They return to the huge family home and begin to execute their criminal intent.

In Varanasi, Tyagi hams proportionately to the flowing Ganga, finds volunteer Veeru (Utkarsh Yadav), the latter’s love interest Meena (Simrat Kaur) her over-the-top even by the Patekar-Sharma combo Mausi (Ashwini Kalsekar). Veeru and his aide Pappu (Rajpal Yadav) and local cheats who see a great opportunity in Tyagi — a sitting duck on the banks of the Ganga. A variety of events and moronic interventions and circumstances lead to the entire team arriving in Simla. A good (?) part of the 160-minute narrative is untastefully wasted in developing the Veeru character, his romance and the mass of irrelevant romance.

Some purposeless characters, insane twists, turns and bizarre logic govern happenings till you’re at your wits end if you aren’t up the wall within minutes of the start.

With Anil Sharma it is an unapologetic style and no holds barred. Never hesitant to draw a punch, Sharma can only scream, he can never state. His stance is clearly: Caveat Emptor — let the buyer beware. He has a team that is in perfect sync with his wavelength. Nana Patekar moves from subtle to signature. The rest are irrelevant to the craft and this includes the talented Khushboo whose Dard Ka Rishta debut over four decades ago was memorable. Now not. Vanvaas is sanity and serenity in exile.