Grahan finally limps on to our screens after a delay of more than a year. In that period of time, it is only natural that the freshest and most topical of films would have lost their sheen and any real interest that one may have had in the subject. There is of course hope in having confidence in your product, that the content would speak for itself and would hold the same magnetic pull that it would have one year ago.

Well, Grahan suffers on many accounts. It is a film of missed opportunities, a film which attempts many strands but cannot and does not succeed in actually doing justice to any one of them. The film opens with a simple and innocent girl, Parvati( Manisha) shown in between the credits, living life with apparent gay abandon. She is engaged to marry Raj Zutshi. However, she catches the eye of the chief Minister's son Sanjay (Prasad Purandare) who arranges for her to be brought to the farm house where she is brutally raped and then kept incarcerated for over a month. Sanjay's sister Suchitra (Anupama Verma) is in love with Jaggu (Jackie Shroff), a lawyer.

The Chief minister dies and it is considered that Suchitra should step into her father's shoes instead of her brother. Sanjay is soon arrested for rape and Jaggu defends him at the trial. Here he paints Parvati as a prostitute and manages to have Sanjay acquitted whereas we see a twitch or two in Parvati's face perhaps meant to signify her descent into madness. All's well and we cut to a party shortly after the trial when Sanjay admits to Jaggu that he had raped Parvati. Slapping him on the face, Jaggu leaves to "apologise" to Parvati for having "raped" her again in court. After some searching, he finds her scavenging on some road and he takes her away to some faraway farmhouse. Paro appears to have lost her mind. Although not quite a lunatic, she seems to have regressed into a world of her own. Doctors say that she is suffering from trauma and that with time, she will be back to normal. Jaggu takes it upon himself to try and rehabilitate her. This causes more friction for him as his girlfriend, lied to by her cocaine sniffing and obviously psychotic brother, believes that Jaggu has now been ensnared by the girl. The other obvious explanation is that this is a political plot by the opposition. Quite suddenly, having regained her composure but still shunned by her fiancé and his family despite Jaggu's attempts, Paro ends up a political rally where she takes out a gun and exacts her own brand of justice.

The question that we stand faced with now is whether justice will prevail or whether Paro will once again be raped by the system? Will Jaggu get another chance to undo the damage that he had inflicted earlier? Does Paro actually have a future at all? Grahan attempts too much and ends up with nothing. For a film to have potential and then to squander it is almost a greater crime than making a run of the mill film, expecting to achieve nothing and thereby, reaping the harvest if the film manages to excite even a few! Grahan aspires to be serious cinema but fails quite spectacularly. The film cannot decide and in fact, does not decide whether it is going to be the story of a rape victim and her subsequent suffering, or a film about conscience, especially that of the lawyer who tries to make amends. Or then, it is a film about power and politics or simply a tender love story. Well, it certainly isn't the latter because there is no hint or suggestion that Jaggu is at all drawn to her except for trying to help her for the wrong that has been inflicted on her. In any event, this section of the film lacks any form of credibility as does the ascension to the CM's chair of Suchitra, quite believable in Indian politics given its dynastic history but somehow unbelievable here given the character of Suchitra.

The final court scene is also a complete cop out and the punch that was expected, peters out into a mere smack. Paro has done no wrong? Where is her salvation? What does she get for the wrong that was done to her? In the final analysis, nothing at all. And the viewer is left with a similar feeling.

Manisha Koirala somehow fails to impress, not because she has given a performance which is lacking in any respect but because her role is not developed well enough. Her descent into madness and her cure is all rather abrupt and shown in the most cliched way. She snivels a great deal when she should have been made to emote through her eyes. The trouble with Manisha is that you expect from a great deal and in a product such as this, one feels let down that her role was not better defined. She has her scenes, the one where she is found scavenging, becoming half child, half whore. But individual scenes do not make a film. Jackie Shroff is also competent but wrestles hard to make his character somewhat believable. But the story is such that this is an uphill task. Aunpama Verma gives a decent account of herself but again, nothing more than that. The biggest flaw comes in some awful editing, scenes left in mid flow, depriving the film of its dramatic strength. Directed by Shashilaal Nair, this one is more from his Falak days rather than his later stuff and I am sorry to say, good intentions do not make for a good film always. One more regret…the song I liked best in the film, the one with the titles, is not available on the soundtrack!