Whether the human drama matches that is questionable even the intelligent, expressive Bhatt can’t make complete sense of Roop’s self-abnegation. That set alone underlines Kalank’s status as a superlative piece of technical craft, one that rolls off several of the year’s most beauteous shots. Offering this self-caged bird some possibility of escape is Varun Dhawan as a hunky blacksmith and Madhuri Dixit, typically captivating as a disgraced courtesan teaching dance out of a studio that makes Kensington Palace look like a two-bed council flat. You may simply not believe that, in 1944, the dying wife of a prominent newspaper editor would invite kite-catching free spirit Roop (Alia Bhatt) under her roof to serve as her eventual replacement nor that the younger woman would accept, resigning herself to gazing mournfully at the world from a decorous window seat. Writer-director Abhishek Varman has devised a compelling premise – a household rearranging itself alongside a country – but spends most of the first half trying to bolster his naggingly flimsy narrative foundation. Only the box-office figures will show whether it has succeeded. Kalank, an extraordinarily lavish soap, feels like mega-producer Karan Johar’s last-ditch attempt to force the issue, recruiting major stars to enact a tangled domestic drama against the backdrop of partition.
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