Review of movie Pataakha

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Rating:3.5/5

Pataakha is the story of sisters who love to hate each other. This isn't your average sibling rivalry; this is passionate and spiteful hatred for your kin. The sisters literally want to strangle and choke the life out of each other. This strange sibling relationship forms the crux of Vishal Bhardwaj’s film, where the Rajasthani language and the rustic setting present a side of Rajasthan that you haven’t seen before. But for all its novelty, Pataakha is a film that’s a bit too hard to take in. Grasping the strong Rajasthani dialogues might prove to be a challenge for the average viewer. For 2 hours and 15 minutes, the sole focus of the screenplay stays on the fact that the sisters can’t live without getting into a brawl and while the uniqueness of the story is admirable, after a point, it does get a tad monotonous. 

Badki and Chhutki’s bickering and battles become spectacles for local crowds as their wily neighbour, Dipper, never misses a chance to instigate a war between the two sisters. Vishal Bhardwaj’s Pataakha, comes from an original short story by writer Charan Singh Pathik, and the sheer audacity of the sisters’ relationship, makes this idea interesting. As a viewer, the most pertinent question that you feel while watching Pataakha is ‘why do the sisters fight so much?’ At some point in the film, the father (Vijay Raaz) poses the same question to Dipper, who explains that it’s just like the one between India and Pakistan, where the sisters and the countries cannot survive without conflict and combat.

Vishal Bhardwaj has set the film in Rajasthan and the sights and sounds are nothing like the usual, castle-heavy landscapes of Jaipur and Udaipur, which the audience has seen before. While he’s kept the story realistic to an extent that the characters speak only in the local language, which also becomes one of the biggest problems for the audience. You will often find yourself grappling to comprehend the dialogues. Perhaps, more lines in Hindi would have made it easier for the audience to connect with Pataakha’s excellent physical and situational humour.