Starring: Sanjay Suri, Juhi Chawla, Victor Banerjee, Lillete Dubey, Purab Kohli, Dipannita Sharma, Gautam Kapoor, Shweta Kwaatra, Peeya Rai Chowdhury and Shayan Munshi Story and Screenplay: Onir Dialogue: Amitabh Varma Art: Shamita Sarkar, Ambika Suri & Tina Nagpaul Styling: Anita Dongre Sound Design: Arun Nambiar Editor: Onir Cinematography: Arvind Kannabiran Lyrics: Amitabh Varma Music: Viveck Philip Produced by: Sanjay Suri, Onir, Vicky Tejwani and Raj Kaushal Directed by: Onir

Synopsis

Nikhil Kapoor is the all round state swimming champion of Goa. His father, Navin Kapoor has brought him up to be a sportsman and is a proud father. His mother, Anita Rosario Kapoor dotes on him and his elder sister, Anamika - Anu, is more of a friend to him. It is the picture of a perfect happy family. Handsome, jovial and charming, he is the idol of his peers and his friends love him. But all this changes one fine morning. Nikhil is detected HIV positive…

My Brother Nikhil gives you hope that sensible, intelligent films can indeed be made in India. The film is an extremely assured directorial debut for Onir who shows fine control over his handling of emotions and relationships, which is what good human stories are all about. Where the film scores is in its tender and subtle handling of delicate issues - never giving in to the obvious and avoiding being preachy while showing much maturity as it deals with issues like homosexuality and HIV AIDS. The film, while taking its time to settle down, works its way to quite an emotional wallop, making you care and move along with its characters - something very few films today manage to do.

Based on real life events, My Brother Nikhil is an eye-opener as it looks at the initial prejudice against HIV AIDS in the 1980s when little was known about the disease in India. The sequences following Sanjay Suri’s detection as HIV positive as he is let down by his parents and stripped off all dignity and treated worse than the plague, being arrested and subsequently put into a rat hole sanitarium, are harrowing to say the least.

Structured as the story of a man recounted by his sister and other people he knew on his death anniversary, several sequences linger on in the mind after the film is over, always a good sign for a film – The brother – sister scenes bringing alive their closeness, the father - son reunion, the sister avoiding going to Nikhil’s room as he is near death’s door as she doesn’t want him to catch her crying, the father’s breakdown in private to mention a few.

And lifting the film several notches, the performances are spot on barring Gautam Kapoor, who cuts a listless figure as Juhi’s fiancé turned husband. Sanjay Suri responds with the performance of his career. He makes the most of an author-backed role giving an extremely humane performance, moving you with his fight to live a normal life – at least what is left of it. Victor Banerjee and Lillette Dubey are flawless as the parents who are partial to and extremely proud of their little boy but desert him when he needs them the most. Add to this a great supporting performance by Purab and above all a tremendous one by Juhi Chawla as Anu. Though admittedly she too takes time to settle in the film - her initial scenes actually have her ‘acting’ but then these are scenes with Gautam Kapoor – with him not helping her much at all. However, she is faultless thereafter whether we see her bringing out her tremendous inner strength fighting for Nikhil to live with dignity or see her bravely cope with his inevitable death.

Special mention must be made of use of the music. The background score by Viveck Phillip is totally in sync with the film and like the rest of the film is subdued, subtle without ever getting loud and obvious and the one song Le Chale Le Chale is judicially used as part of the narrative and sung feeling in all three avatars by Shan, Sunidhi Chauhan and KK to go on Suri, Juhi and Purab respectively.

On the flip side, the film is slow to get off the ground with much too much of narration by everyone about Nikhil rather than actual scenes with Nikhil. This is especially true in the first half of the film and gets tedious as some times Onir resorts to cutting 5 or six of these narrations together rather then moving on with the story. This also gives you a feeling that there isn’t enough material in the film to show time passing between the eighties and nineties and a desperate effort has been made cover up though these ‘interviews’. While much effort has gone into Sanjay Suri’s ‘look’ particularly in his last days, unfortunately for a swimming champion, Suri’s body looks rather loose and this is made even more apparent in the shot in slow motion as he runs towards the camera. And yes, the day for night scenes are a big no-no.

It is heartening to note that Yashraj Films, purely on the film’s merit decided to distribute the film thus ensuring that it gets a proper theatrical release. Now one only hopes that the film has a good run at the box office because My Brother Nikhil is a film that deserves to be seen.

To know more about the film, see our preview or visit www.mybrothernikhil.com