'The Sky is Pink' (2019) is a fictionalised biopic, telling the inspirational story of a family dealing with their daughter's terminal illness against difficult odds. The film is told through the voice of the now-dead girl who takes on the role of an irreverent narrator. The story goes back and forth from modern day to her birth and the many milestones of her journey through illness. The tone is determinedly cheerful, even in the worst of moments.
The first hour of the film is truly heartwarming. Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Farhan Akhtar put in sincere but uneven performances as the spitfire mother and resigned father respectively. Director Shonali Bose reveals a keen eye for detail of both emotion and setting: the most affecting parts of this film dwell on the exhausting yet beautiful task of first becoming young parents. The lens stops generously over a father holding her little girls' hand in the dark and a mother making helicopter waves in the air with a plastic spoon to keep baby interested. We see the two parents take opposing night and day shifts so that they barely ever meet each other, and still finding the time for a quick hello or a laugh about how their baby will never stop crying. This, the director seems to say, is what domestic romance really is all about, and it is gratifying to see this everyday reality depicted on screen.
It is when the children grow up and the narrative shifts back to their life in India that the film loses its grip. The muddled back-and-forth storytelling begins to grate and even sap the proceedings of emotional heft. Beyond a point we know the girl has died and feel like the story is simply hitting all the plot points before heading to its inevitable conclusion. Sentimentalism begins to creep in, with last wish holidays and puppies being thrown into the woodworks. The girl has her first crush and the parents begin to drift apart, but these crucial events are written as single scenes which aren't further developed.
We are told, not shown, how grief threatens to pull a family apart. This approach affects the acting performances too: Priyanka's portrayal becomes increasingly melodramatic and the wonderful young Zaira Wasim becomes a little too cutesie. Farhan is probably the only actor in the cast who keeps an even keel. The screenplay drags and by the time the coffin is lowered to a stubbornly cheerful soundtrack, the film seems tonally off. A pity, because this wonderful true story shows lots of promise at the outset.
Genre: Emotional drama
Language: Hindi Runtime: 2h 23 min Year of Release: 2019
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Hot take is a series in which I offer my first impressions of films from India and around the world.
Commenti