Gulabo Sitabo released on Amazon Prime Video on June 12.
This film is both a melancholic lament for and a biting satire on Lucknow and its people. A film in which language reigns supreme. It is an art film. Every single thing is so beautifully designed.
One Word Review... Gulabo Sitabo: WONDERFUL. - taran adarsh
Kaisi hai Begum?
Begum showing her hands with smirk cotton
We love these two bantering without even talking
Here, humour, confusion, and poignancy all come together to depict an eternal confusion of modern Indian life: how can you not be a cannibal in a world of cannibals?
The characters become alive, the stakes more pressing, and the writing energetic and purposeful. Mirza and Baankey, however, continue to stay flat. Bachchan and Khurrana, as expected, are competent, but they don’t move beyond their characters’ narrow loglines. The movie, too, leaves them to their devices. Whenever Mirza displays a discomfiting desire for his wife’s death — a desire that’s constant and severe — the film remains indifferent to it.
But Gulabo Sitabo manages to find its rhythm in the final arc.
At one point, the representatives of a government agency and a private builder arrive at the mansion, quarrelling with the residents over a piece of land. It’s a rare moment in the movie that transcends fiction: a struggle familiar to many Indians, a game where no one wins.