Kalank Movie Review: A still from the film.
We hear KL Saigal's voice on the soundtrack ever so faintly in one passing sequence and a couple of classically-inspired numbers designed to evoke the soundscape of a tawaif's home of an era gone by, but the rest of the film's music - be it the admittedly lively songs or the elaborate background score - is not exactly rooted in the period it is supposed to represent. If only the latter attribute had been extended to the film's length, Kalank would have shed some of its flab. The production design (Amrita Mahal Nakai) and the cinematography (Binod Pradhan) are impressive while Varman orchestrates the resources at his disposal - they are no doubt enormous - with flair and a sense of proportion. However, writer-director Abhishek Varman keeps the propensity for excess largely contained within a firm structure, which ensures that even in its less-than-perfect moments the film does not come unstuck. The film, first envisaged many years ago by the late Yash Johar, is 30 minutes too long, the Heera Mandi setting is overly spick and span, and the plot devices are occasionally unconvincing. Opulent sets, visual flourishes, intense emotions, a luminous Madhuri Dixit who still emotes and pirouettes like a dream and a stunningly on-top-of-her-game Alia Bhatt make Kalank a near-spotless movie experience.
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