Director: Revathi
Writers: Sammeer Arora, Kausar Munir
Cast: Kajol, Vishal Jethwa, Rahul Bose, Riddhi Kumar, Rajeev Khandelwal
As a terminal illness melodrama centered on euthanasia, the sheer artifice of Salaam Venky – the curated feeling, the emotional manipulation, the simplistic rendering of grief and pain, the goodwill cameos, the sappy acting – puts Guzaarish (2010) to shame. Flaunting the pitch of a Bhansali movie without the physical scale is not smart. (How else can you normalise a quadriplegic RJ named Ethan who coins the term “Ethan-asia”?) The hollowness alone becomes tedious to watch: Every movie character seems to be based not on life, but previous movie characters. Every scene morphs into a manicured aesthetic of sadness and spirit: The way light fills the hospital room, the way suffering poses as sunshine, the way a tear escapes an eye, the way every flashback is a happy song, the way every person is either sickeningly sweet or gratingly awful (like a cruel father who declares his terminally ill son as a “dead investment”). Presenting the dying protagonist as an incurable Bollywood fan can only work if the rest of the film stays grounded. But when the film itself is introduced as a musical, it’s hard to tell between the performance and the performance within the performance. As a result, Salaam Venky plays out like an adult story written by sincere young children.
The tragedy is that this film is based on a true story. It didn’t need all the schmaltz. It didn’t have to be so processed and packaged. Salaam Venky stars light-eyed Vishal Jethwa (the villain from the 2019 film, Mardaani 2) as the titular Venkatesh, a 24-year-old boy with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) who gets admitted to the hospital for what seems like one final time in 2004. He is cheery, too cheery, making jokes about his inevitable passing. Everyone is fond of him; it’s the sort of Raj-Kapoor-style utopian place where doctors and nurses are on the brink of singing for him. Venky’s single mother, Sujata (Kajol), is struggling to confront a future without him. His last wish is to be euthanised so that he can donate his functional organs and live on through other people. The first half is about Venky getting his mother to agree. It isn’t totally clear why Sujata is against his wish, but perhaps it has something to do with her being unable to accept his impending demise. Once she agrees, Salaam Venky goes the courtroom-drama way. A kind lawyer (Rahul Bose) files a writ petition for the family, making an official request for euthanasia. The case triggers a national debate. The narrative caricatures – vulture-reporter-turned-compassionate-activist (Aahana Kumra), insensitive public prosecutor (Priyamani), stern judge (Prakash Raj), the discourse montages, the media polls – flow thick and fast.