Lootera

In Bengal in 1953, in the days when land reform is about to break up the great estates, a man introducing himself as an archaeologist arrives at a zamindar family's mansion. Pakhi, the landowner's daughter, falls in love with him. His reason for being there is something else. The film is not interested in the confidence trick. It is interested in the end of a class: the house's furniture, its temple and its land are already being lost, and the man is only the last accelerant of that collapse. The second half moves somewhere else entirely, a snowbound town in Dalhousie, and changes the tone completely. The form is slow and built on composition: long takes, period decor and Amit Trivedi's score. The density customary in Indian cinema is deliberately lowered here. Vikramaditya Motwane directed. The central idea of the second half comes from O. Henry's The Last Leaf, and the production does not hide it. Ranveer Singh and Sonakshi Sinha lead, with Adil Hussain as the father. Who it is for: viewers who like period melodrama, calm narration and visual care. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace. The film slows badly in the second half and its ending can feel emotionally forced.