My Brother...Nikhil

My Brother...Nikhil


MAIN CAST

Sanjay Suri -- Nikhil
Juhi Chawla -- Anu
Victor Banerjee -- Navin
Lillete Dubey -- Anita

BRIEF PLOT OVERVIEW
Nikhil Kapoor is a talented young swimmer with his whole life ahead of him until he contracts AIDS via blood transfusions. His family tells his story after his death.

FILM -- 3.5/5
My Brother...Nikhil is far from perfect, but it's still well-made. The treatment the sick Nikhil receives at the hands of the locals and the way AIDS is perceived in India is, almost unfortunately, portrayed with an unflinching honesty that I found refreshing, if a little depressing. The story has a steady pace, and it didn't have any of the usual "drag" that haunts Bollywood films. The dialogue is often truly horrible, however, and turns the serious subject manner in to something absolutely ridiculous. I honestly felt bad for the actors at some points. I was also a little annoyed that Nigel and Nikhil's relationship was not allowed to have any physicallity to it; the most they do is touch each other's shoulders, whereas Anu and Sam get to have actual physical contact, like holding hands. I wasn't expecting a full-blown sex scene, I just would've liked a little more realism. On the plus side, the camera work is generally well done. There are no melodramatic FLASH-FLASH-FLASH cuts, and with a few minor exceptions, the editing is very good. The scene where Nigel returns home, only to find that his house has been defaced, is especially well-directed. The ending will make you cry buckets.

CHARACTERS -- 3.5/5
I'd heard odes to the performances in this film, so maybe I was setting myself up for failure. Honestly, I think a lot of the performances in this movie are overrated. They're not BAD, per se, but there are parts where even Juhi Chawla seems very soap opera-ish. It doesn't hurt that the characters themselves are 2-dimensional stock characters: the doting mother, the father who still thinks he went wrong parenting his son, the understanding sister...so on and so on. Juhi is beautiful, though, and she's certainly aging well. Sanjay Suri, who plalys the title characters, was the highlight of the cast. Nikhil fits him like a glove, and it's obvious that Sanjay was not afraid to play such a bold role. Purab Kohli plays his sweet but otherwise uncharacterized boyfriend Nigel. Otherwise, the cast and the characters they portray are wholely unremarkable. I wasn't interested in them at all.

SOUNDTRACK -- N/A: points added to "overall"

OVERALL -- 6.5/10
My Brother...Nikhil takes on a difficult subject with a decent script and talented actors doing their best to make the generally bland characters and sometimes melodramatic dialogue work, and in the end, it could be considered a success. But part of me is very troubled by this movie's final message. I know that what they meant to portray was that AIDS is not a gay disease, and maybe they meant to show how people perceive it as one. But I couldn't shake off the feeling that the film makers were nervous about making a heterosexual character contract AIDs. Honestly, what was the point of making Nikhil gay in the first place? Did they have to make him gay, if the point is that people would be prejiduced against him regardless of his sexual orientation? It's a good movie with its heart in the right place, but for some odd reason--perhaps a personal bias, since I have friends with AIDS--I was not entirely convinced by this film. It's worth a watch for something unique and ballsy, but I'm still holding out for something as inspiring as Philadelphia.

TOTAL SCORE -- 14/20 (really good)