Movie Review: Dattak

Dattak - The Adopted (being the English title) was one of those offbeat hindi movies released in 2001. It was never made for a mainstream release as the NFDC label implies. While I am not sure if the english translation really conveys what I think it means, which could very well be wrong with my rusted hindi- datta or dattak would mean the provider. But maybe that does not come from that root at all. All that aside it is a story of broken relations and growing up and trying to rediscover those relations more so the relationship between father and son.

Sunil (Rajit Kapoor) is the son who comes back to Calcutta to meet his father after spending 15 years in US. As we learn in that period of time he married an american and has two children whom he has promised to bring back their grandfather. When Sunil reaches Calcutta he finds the door of his father's house locked and the fact that his father no longer lives there. The father (Anjaan Srivatsav) is an autocratic and angry father who refuses to acknowledge that his son was going to marry a non-indian and refutes all attempts of communication, seen by the many unopened letters Sunil finds in his father's house when he gets there. Then it is just a story of search for his father. In that process Sunil meets his father's friends, his own two siblings, living in Bombay and Varanasi. Sunil's brother in Bombay is estranged from his father because he seemingly is very wealthy moneyminded drunkard and has no respect for anything else. His sister in Varansi is no help either since she has not met her father for a while now. Finally Sunil manages to track his father down to an oldage home to find that his father has passed away just a week before. He then starts hanging out with his father's roommate and listens to his stories, some of the freedom struggle, some of his father and finally asks him to come back to america with him so that he can take care of him. The End!

Okay so some of the ideas in the movie were very important, but many of them were very hackneyed and stereotypical.It does make a social statement on the plight of old people living in the post-colonial India today with the changing and motile population and disregard for older people in society. Part point in the movie is the people who are old in India today were the same people who fought to acheive freedom and now are dying in violent and/or lonely days, how sad it that. Everybody in India blames Sunil for not staying in touch with his father, while it was his father who had not replied to any of his letters or even acknowledged his marriage. There is a backdrop in the movie of the number of robbery and assaults on old people living alone in big cities since their children are far away. And there were frequent images of old people walking around like zombies, which was supposed to represent the forgotten and neglected part of society, I suppose. The main point of the movie was the plight of the old people who have to die in an oldage home surrounded by strangers since they stick to their own ways which should be admired rather than changed. I am not quite sure if I agree with that Indian viewpoint. I agree old people should be respected and it is sad that people die alone, but the movie bends over the other way to show how the whole world or most of it anyway is cruel to old people. I am not sure that really makes the movie seem realistic. I think in the case of Sunil and his father the onus of maintaining relationships goes bothways, if the father is autocratic and dictatorial sure that will make the relationship hard, like any relationship. That point unfortunately is never brought up in the movie. I think to an extent 36 Chowringee Lane does a far greater job of capturing the plight of older people in a changing (and disrespectful) society.

Overall the movie is nice, including the scenes in Calcutta and Varanasi and some countryside vistas. Rajit Kapoor does a good job as the son, though I am not sure if his American accent actually swings. It is definitely worth a watch, while one might not agree with all the points of the movie or the manner of their presentation.