Dasvidaniya – The Best Goodbye Ever

Cast: Vinay Pathak, Neha Dhupia, Rajat Kapoor, Ranvir Shorey, Purbi Joshi and Sarita Joshi

Director: Shashant Shah

Overall Rating: 7.5/10.0 (which is definitely a Good-to-Watch Movie)

The movie is said to be based on Akira Kurosawa’s Ikuru (1952) and Rob Reiner’s Bucket List (2007), but for the Indian audience, it can be loosely compared to Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anand, which is an interesting tale of a man living his life to the fullest, despite being well aware of his impending death.

Dasvidanya tells the story of a typical person, Amar Kaul (Vinay Pathak), who though was considered as one of the studious kids in school, just reaches the post of an Accounts Manager in a Pharmaceutical Company because of his simplicity, while others climbed the Corporate ladders swiftly. The character talks about a typical lower middle class person in the city of Mumbai, his laborious job, hefty amount of work, dominant Boss, widow mother, and of course, the Mumbai’s transport system, i.e. the Local trains. The best part of this character is how closely it is relates to the Indian common man, who lives like a dead person every day.

His tangled life goes around such daily traumas, until one day, a supposedly known stomach infection strikes the deadly reality of being a Third Stage Stomach Cancer. Now, told by the doctor that he has only a few months to live, Amar realizes that he has never “lived life”. Never having mustered the courage to do the things he liked Amar decides to stop wasting his remaining life. As he makes a daily To-do list which used to give him a sense of achievement when he would check small things like getting a battery and fixing a remote, he now makes a To-Do list, which he calls, Top 10 Things To-Do before I die. The fact how Amar’s mother makes him visit a huge number of tantriks (religious people) for the healing of his cancer is yet another striking similarity with typical Indian mind-set. The film effectively finds humor in death, even sometimes at the cost of trivializing a tragedy.

The things he wants to do include buying a car, proposing to his childhood love, make a foreign trip and meet his childhood friend, and make amends with his family. There are also various other fancies that he desires in life and at times he gets more than he asked for from life. Yet the movie is not wonderful because of its story-line which is predictive. What makes the movie really wonderful to watch is the small moments and dialogues that make the very fabric in which the tale is woven. There are various incidents in the movie that make us smile and yet there are moments which bring tears to the eyes and that makes the wonderful blend of this movie and keep it going.

Of course, the movie has its own set of downs like a few parts could have been improved or do not sound convincing enough for the viewers to digest, but all in all, Dasvidaniya is engrossing to watch at least some parts. Kailash Kher’s Mumma is a wonderful song that shows the silent love between a mother and a child and so is the “silence” with which Amar proposes to his childhood love. These things raise the bar of the movie to the next level. Some of the dialogues about life that Amar makes about life are truly wonderful. Over one of his guitar lessons Amar’s teacher asks him, “What’s your problem in life, man?” to which Amar replies “My life is the problem”. Yet the dialogue that will remain with me is when Amar says, when Sikandar (Alexander) died, he died smiling, Amar wants to die playing (the guitar). The discussions reminded me of the famous poem, Leisure by W. H. Davis which goes "WHAT is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?" And this feeling with its etched characters makes Dasvidaniya a real pleasure to watch.

Final Verdict: Vinay Pathak has truly raised his acting to the next level and the movie is really wonderful to watch. While it may not make to the list of ten things to do before you die, it's certainly an option when you want a good movie to watch.