A remote and forgotten town in Rajashthan...A failed novelist frittering away his life in a forced marriage and a thankless government job...A mystery woman who ends up dying mysteriously on the highway...A high profile scam involving land and water...A powerful minister who patronises an orphanage from where a young girl disappears...A pretty girl who is not what she is claims to be...An illegitimate daughter who wants legitimacy from her politician father so that she and her husband can have a share of his property...Murders...More murders...Disappearances...Pedophilia...Accusations...Threats...Blackmails. Beatings...Chases…

Debutant Navdeep Singh packs in all these and more in his film Manorama: Six Feet Under and works up a thriller that holds up some promising drama. It has all the ingredients of a classic film noir – a false opening in the form of a woman who introduces herself as somebody else; a femme fatale who takes the private eye on a ride; conspiracies that unfold from seemingly normal events; ; a powerful and well-connected adversary who is a patriarch; the mingling of personal obsession (read sexual) with the larger conspiracy; the marriage of big business to corrupt political deals; dislocation of impoverished people as a result; and the jaded protagonist who finds himself inexorably drawn to the vortex of events that carry him from one tumult to another till his personal life goes for a toss and he finds a part of his body dysfunctional for a considerable stretch of the film, thanks to the hoodlums who try to thwart the detective’s nosey ride.

The reference to Roman Polanski’s cult film Chinatown is obvious and acknowledged (in a scene from the film playing on television where two hoodlums slash away at Jack Nickolson’s nose; in Navdeep’s film the hoodlums break Abhay Deol’s fingers). But that is where the parallel ends. Navdeep successfully takes the core of the 1974 Hollywood classic and transforms and transplants it into a remote town in Rajasthan and adds more layers to the story than it can perhaps handle.

The character of Satyaveer Singh (Abhay Deol) is introduced through his own voice-over as he rides on his new bike, which is a 'gift'. He is a failed and frustrated novelist who is out on suspension from his job because of corruption charges. As he rides his bike he relates the boredom and ennui of his work town where nothing seems what it appears to be; everything is like a mirage. And suddenly we are treated to a scantily clad Yana Gupta in the middle of the highway who drains a bottle of mineral water on her head in an ad like image. Satyaveer drives through her and Yana disintegrates into thousand sparkling pieces! Whoosh! It is a magical moment in the film and the tone is set; we gear up for what is to follow. But unfortunately, the first half of the film does not follow up the promise and is quite slow in fact, despite its flashes of brilliant moments. The basic mystery is introduced but we have no clue where the story is leading to. We know a big scam involving the State Irrigation Minister (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) is afoot and the character of Manorama (Sarika in a wasted role) coaxes Satyaveer to spy on the minister who she claims is her husband. The mystery deepens when it is reported that she has committed suicide by jumping in front of a speeding truck. By that time Satyaveer has learnt that she is not the minister’s wife and her life is in danger. There is more to it than meets the eye. He continues his investigations that do not yield much result and by interval we are almost wondering what all is happening? But the film picks up pace post-interval and packs in a chain of events that comes as complete surprise to the audience.

Though the second half is more racy, the film unfolds in a mode wherein the viewers are forced to connect to the events on screen in a proactive manner and fill in the missing links and back-stories. This is where the film falters majorly because we cannot keep track of the events which are piled on one over the other rapidly and cannot figure out the reasons for a whole lot of actions; as a result the viewers are left guessing and bewildered and sometimes even barking up the wrong tree. There is just too much confusion. For example, when does Manorama take those intimate photographs of the minister with the young girl? In that case why does she need the help of Satyaveer? Why does she run from Satyaveer when he stumbles into her in Jaipur? What exactly is the role of the girl who called herself Sheetal? How did the minister get her and put her to use? What exactly is the role of the doctor and Sameera, the minister’s illegitimate daughter? Why are they killed? How is the property angle as represented by the murdered couple connected to the wider social and political drama being investigated by Manorama? How does the minister’s pedophile angle fit into the whole scheme? How exactly does the young girl from the orphanage die in the minister’s house? It's not that these strands are not sought to be explained, but for significant stretches of time the audience has to grapple with the links and forge a connection between them, as if solving a riddle much against its wish; as a result they cannot keep up with the pace and the flow and are left high and dry. As more information and revelations pile on, the film cannot take the load towards the end and seems to be in a hurry to wind up. So it suddenly resorts to a totally ineffectual series of freeze frames of the secondary characters and sordid back events as Satyaveer’s voice-over explains away a whole lot of mysteries and missing links.

The discrepancies in the screenplay apart, the film is also terribly let down by its inconsistent camerawork. There is a distinct mismatch between indoor scenes, which are almost like bad television, and outdoor scenes, which resort to overdose of crane shots and complicated movements, some just gimmicky. Recall an earlier shot of the film where the camera moves over a single-storied office building, looking down at it, comes to the front of the building and then it cranes down to catch Abhay Deol as he emerges from the gate and follows him to his new bike which he kicks starts and drives off. That is quite an impressive beginning to a film but the camerawork does not sustain the yardstick that it sets as the film progresses and goes steadily downhill.

The sync sound and sound designing by Subhash Sahu is quite impressive and so is the background score by Raiomond Mirza. Jabeen Merchant’s editing manages to hold the film together while the production designing (Mustafa Stationwala, Meghna Gandhi) is noteworthy in it that the interiors of the principal characters are realistic and an extension of their drab middle-class personalities; same with the costume designing (Payal Saluja and Amrita Pednekar).

Abhay Deol as the failed writer and amateur detective scores extremely high on the performance chart and seems to be getting better with every film. The way he internalizes the gradual transformation from a bored family man and frustrated government engineer to being a private eye on a mission to unearth the truth against all odds, gives that extra edge to the film. In the scenes where the minister raves and rants against him and calls him a small fish, he sticks to his seat, literally, and fixes him with a gaze that ably demonstrates his histrionic skills and marks him out to be amongst the most promising actors of our times. Gul Panag as his wife looks de-glamorized to the point of being too ordinary. The family scenes between the two do underline their monotonous existence but that’s about it; it fails to add any additional layer. Vinay Pathak, in the role of an alcoholic thanedar and Abhay’s brother-in-law, has emerged as a noted character artiste in recent times in all the films that he is doing, but in this film his presence is missed as he disappears for large tracts of time,especially in the second half. Sarika as Manorama is totally wasted and badly photographed. Her character fails to evoke the necessary mystery element needed at the beginning of the film to set the tone; it looks as if she is just going through the motions. However, the two actors who play the minister’s henchmen who bash up Abhay and batter his bike steal the show whenever they appear on the screen with their peppy dialogues and no-nonsense attitude; they spice up the action with their performance and come across as deadly and potent pawns in the power game. Kulbhushan Kharbanda as the wiry and wily minister is in his elements and it is good to see him back in action after a long time. Raima Sen has the meatiest role and delivers a commendable but understated performance as she changes shades in the course of the film; but her interactions with Abhay sound contrived because of loose dialogue writing in those scenes. But the scene where Raima Sen demonstrates a seduction piece on Abhay Deol under the orders of her mentor is extremely effective.

All in all, a good effort that reasonably demonstrates the director’s ability to handle scenes and actors but let down by an overloaded and confusing screenplay. The film does manage to evoke the sights and sounds of a small North Indian town with its rundown havelis, dusty roads and highway, overcrowded buses and taxi services, road side tea shops, busy saloons, the unduly curious neighbours, transport yards parked with trucks, political rallies, minister’s bungalow, deserted construction sites and the ubiquitous police station where small time criminals are unabashedly belted by those in authority as routine practice. It is quite a brilliant stroke to set a crime thriller in such a sleepy town where time seems to have come to a standstill and the director manages to pull it through, almost.