I Am Movie Reviews

When you take up different stories and juggle with sundry characters, there has to be a string that binds them together and a leitmotif that holds the film. Director Onir doesn't err here. I Am is essentially an affirmative assertion of identity and an appropriation of private spaces in a society that has a tendency to use tradition as the most convenient whiplash to beat any and everyone into disturbing conformity. The film serenades the art of saying `No'

Four short stories, roughly 25 minutes each, make up the honest and hard-hitting feature 'I Am', directed by Onir. In the first, Nandita Das is an embittered woman determined not to lean on a partner to fulfill her desire for a baby. The next is about a displaced Kashmiri Hindu, played by Juhi Chawla, who returns to Srinagar after 16 years, to sell her old home and confront the ghosts of the past. The third stars Sanjay Suri as a manipulative filmmaker

This seems like the most accomplished Friday, after a long, long time. Certain stories that were considered blasphemous, even sacrilege, that lay buried in the dark, with film-makers not wanting to touch with a bargepole, are gradually finding their way on the Hindi screen. Onir, however, attempts to narrate four different stories in I AM. The topics range from artificial insemination, child sexual abuse and homosexuality. Oh yes, Onir had always

I Am’ puts the spotlight on four characters who live very different lives but are unified in one crucial way, the only one that matters : they are all intent on finding themselves, walking past murky, fractured relationships, battling pain and displacement. These are not new stories, but they mostly do not find a central place in our movies because they cut too close to the bone. Onir brings them into much-needed focus in ‘I Am’. Afia ( Das) is an abandoned wife

“Kaafi garmi hai (It’s quite hot),” is a young college kid’s (Purab Kohli) lame opener. The woman sitting next to him understands the boy’s discomfort at making a conversation. “You don't have to talk, if you don't want to,” she, Afia (Nandita Das), tells him. It is a weird situation. The two are at the lobby of a fertility clinic. The boy’s a sperm donor -- the woman, the recipient. As per rules, they were never supposed to meet. But she was adamant

I Am opens with Rabindranath Tagore’s celebrated lines of empowerment: “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high....” And while many films quote many lines at the start and can never justify why those words were put there to begin with, Onir’s four-in-one fourth film is that rare celluloid experience which actually lives those lines from Gitanjali. Over the half-an-hour screen time that each story gets, all the four protagonists of I Am

The first story is of Afia (Nandita Das) who yearns for a baby only to realize that her husband loves someone else and wants divorce. Having lost faith in the male species, she decides to opt for artificial insemination. Acquaintances are against the act and she has apprehensions of her own. Until she almost ends up on a date with the sperm donor (Purab Kohli), to know him on a personal level, much against legality. Onir opens his film with a less-spoken

Onir’s I Am is an earnest but uneven exploration of identity and fear, woven through four inter-linked stories. The protagonist of each narrative is struggling to define who she or he is. So Megha, a Kashmiri Pundit, played by Juhi Chawla, returns to Srinagar after 20 years but is a stranger in her own home. Abhimanyu, a documentary filmmaker played by Sanjay Suri, was sexually abused by his step-father and is grappling with his sexual identity

I Am is a collage of four different stories depicting emotional journeys undertaken by characters struggling to fight their personal battles. While someone is battling with sexual abuse (Suri) another wonders if his sexual preference will ever be accepted (Bose). There's also the tale of a Kashmiri Pandit (Chawla) who despite her moving out of the Valley cannot disown her real identity. Another chapter deals with a single woman (Das) yearning for motherhood

I Am review by Komal Nahta: Business rating: 0.5 star. What’s Good: The performances of the stars. What’s Bad:...