Many of the readers might recall that in the eighties, there was a particular genre in Hindi cinema which mainly revolved around subjects of infidelity, extra-marital affairs and some unusual man-women relationships. The movies released under this genre, more or less relied just on their skin-show and few controversial scenes which easily used to become the talk of the town in those days. Among the famous directors of such movies was Vinod Pande who came up with films such as, Ek Baar Phir, Yeh Nazdeekiyan, Ek Naya Rishta and Sach. Post 2000 too he came up with two more movies on this same old pattern of his, which were, Sins (2005) and Red Swastik (2007) featuring Mona Chopra in the lead, now famous as Sherlyn Chopra.
The present Mr. Singh Mrs Mehta is also exactly made on the same guideline, which believes in only one way of bringing in the viewers and that is by showing few naked bodies at regular intervals of its running time and nothing else. With only a one line script and four characters cheating with each other as its base, the movie solely depends upon its erratic nude scenes and has nothing else to offer in the name of cinema.
Right from its first scene itself the director clearly shows his main purpose of making the film and even the posters of the movie convey the same. Sharing a similar theme with "In The Mood of Love" (Hongkong) (2000), Mr. Singh Mrs. Mehta doesn't offer you a single moment to enjoy. The pace is lazy, the developments are boring and the performances are just not worth talking about. In fact, in few scenes, its the dialogue delivery of Aruna Shields (the nude model), which brings in some rare laughter in the theater.
In straight words its probably the worst movie of this year wherein the direction is poor, cinematography is amateurish and the acting is pathetic. But coming to the nude scenes in the movie, the handling of these sequences both by the director and the Censor Board clearly reveal the double standards of our Indian Culture we are living in.
Our society has always believed in suppressing things especially whenever it comes to a sensual interpretation or subject of sex used by the medium of art, literature or cinema. And Mr. Singh Mr. Mehta once again proves this eternal truth prevailing around us from ages.
In this current example, at one end the director is trying to take advantage of the sexual curiosity or craze in the younger generation by putting some nude scenes in his film which actually have no meaning at all in the script. And on the other hand the Censor Board even after giving it a clear Adult Certificate, blurs down all those scenes entirely and leaves everything on the individual imagination of the viewers making it even more sexual or rather funny for the audiences. So in a way with "Mr.Singh Mrs. Mehta", both the director and the Censor look like trying to make a fool of the viewers with their own childish kind of suppressing acts.
But thankfully our Indian viewer's intelligence has grown significantly in the last decade, with the World Cinema now coming at our door steps through the digital medium. So now no such attempts can fool the audience anymore and the producers should stop making such crap in the name of multiplex movies or new age cinema of any kind.
