Films on death, especially one that deals with the loss of a parent, always get to me. And so when I walked in to watch Goodbye, I was fully prepared to shed copious tears, hoping this would be a cathartic watch in more ways than one. However, this is exactly the kind of film that proves that good intentions don’t always a good film make. What should have been a lump-in-the-throat-inducing exploration of grief and the aftermath of coping with life after the loss of a loved one, becomes first, a father guilt-tripping his children into believing, and then bludgeoning them with it, that their pursuit of a career or seeking a life outside the comfort of their home has made them neglect their parents. Second, Goodbye attempts to be a critique, albeit superficial, of society’s blind belief in rituals and religious practices.
What we get throughout the length of this patchy film is an endless lecture on what’s right and what’s wrong, with the film ultimately, and ironically, reinforcing the very beliefs and traditions that it sought to denounce in the first place. Which simply means that director Vikas Bahl doesn’t really know what he wants his film to be. The awkward meshing of genres — coming of age, tragi-comedy, leached-out drama — and a second half completely divorced in tone and texture from Half One make Goodbye a film that may have sounded promising on paper but fails irrevocably in execution.
The sudden passing away of a mother who held the family together even when they were thousands of miles away from each other, brings the children and their father — who hasn’t always seen eye to eye with his kids — under the same roof. Harish Bhalla (Amitabh Bachchan in a very Amitabh Bachchan role) is grief-stricken, but also Hulk-level angry with his children — especially Tara (Rashmika Mandanna) and Karan (Pavail Gulati) — for not being around during their mothers’ last moments. Quite a bit of the first hour is spent in him being caustic towards them, even as Tara continuously questions the myriad outdated rituals being performed for her mom Gayatri (a sunshine-y Neena Gupta who pops up in flashbacks and in their imagination) who never believed in them herself. Tara being a rebel is illustrated through a bunch of stereotypes — she downs shots with abandon in nightclubs, sports a tattoo and lives in with her Muslim boyfriend. The stereotypes in this film just don’t end with her portrayal.
A prolonged pre-cremation sequence seeks to critically look at performative grief, but the film turns out to be performative itself. It’s also inexplicably ludicrous in parts. Bhalla gives his son a earful for having sex with his American wife (Elli Avram) on the night his mother has been cremated, only to be told that they were “not doing it for fun” but were trying to have a child because his late wife wanted grandchildren. The whole scene is not only written badly but also so awkwardly performed — even by Bachchan himself — that the film kind of loses you there itself.
In the second half, the film travels to Rishikesh where a priest (Sunil Grover is laughable in a role that’s actually meant to be serious) walks around with a laptop. A birthday celebration towards the end of the film should have triggered tear ducts but brings on major eye rolls, with Amit Trivedi’s below-average score only making it worse.
It would be a cliche to say that Goodbye has its heart in the right place, but this is a necessary cliche to describe a film, which, otherwise is all over the place. The only time one feels the hint of a tear is when Bachchan delivers his trademark monologue as he speaks to his wife’s urn of ashes. The rest of Goodbye is so manicured and manipulative that it never really strikes a chord even when you earnestly hope that it will.
PS: On an aside, the #MeToo men are crawling out of the woodwork. Vikas Bahl has a film, with no less than Amitabh Bachchan, in theatres. Sajid Khan is in Bigg Boss. But whistleblower Tanushree Dutta is still waiting for her phone to ring with a Bollywood offer.
Goodbye (U)
Director: Vikas Bahl
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Rashmika Mandanna, Neena Gupta, Sunil Grover, Pavail Gulati, Elli Avram
Running time: 144 minutes
