Sins - Review

"Guilt is a rope that wears thin" - Ayn Rand

This almost entirely sums up the movie. Sins released in 2005 created a furore because of the depiction of an affair of a Catholic Priest. The movie though fleetingly, touches upon the fact that passions cannot be held ransom by rigid moral laws.

The plot is simple - William (Shiny Ahuja) is a pastor in Quilon, Kerala who meets Rosemary (Seema Rahmani) in a freak accident. Since Rosemary has to go to an exam urgently, William offers to give her a lift. Once she passes the exams and with some assistance from William, Rosemary gets into a nursing college. When she comes to thank him, they quickly become good friends. As the days go by, the friendship becomes more and more passionate and they end up making love. Devastated both of them seek atonement for their sins. They visit priests in other regions under changed identities and confess to their sins.

But after the period of penance / abstinence, they can't resist each other and a full blown relationship develops. They make excuses to meet each other and give in to their burning passions. As time passes, William is no more guilty of his conduct. He become more bold and almost publicly demands seeks Rosemary. To avoid losing his well paying job, he conjures up a scheme to ensure that society does not come in his way. He convinces Rosemary to marry Graham with the condition that they would be man and wife only on paper and he would have all the rights on Rosemary.

Vinod Pande (the director) unfortunately is trying to please too many people. He is torn between what he wants and what the audience supposedly want. He tries to please both and ends up with a mess. There too many love scenes that are neither aesthetic nor gel with the rest of the story. They just eat away screen time.

The saved time could have been used up to show the transition of William from a God fearing priest to a debauch hedonist. The way a man loses his guilt and gives up a celibate life for pleasure. A man torn between his job and his personal life - leading two lives - celebrating his freedom and constrained by his societal position at the same time. A man emboldened by ignorance of his actions by the society deciding to dictate the lives of others for his own pleasure.

Rosemary is given a raw deal. She is a puppet in the hands of William. Even when given a chance, she does not quite measure up. She shows her body more than her acting skills. There are lot of scenes where she could have done much better - especially when overcoming her guilt of making love to a priest, the guilt and the subsequent reconciliation with William.

The performances get louder and predictable as the movie progresses and it stumbles upon a very ordinary ending. The use of Malayalam to depict Kerala is jarring at best. Better would have been to shoot the movie in Malayalam, Hindi or English completely rather than trying to artificially prop up the image of the place. I don't know how many Fernandezes are there in Kerala. Rosemary and her mother look more Goan than Malyali - especially in the way they dress and the way they speak in English.

One final comment on the religious undertone of the movie - while the movie does touch upon the restrictions of a particular religion, it should not be construed to be derogating that religion. In fact William's religion actually restrains him from going all the way by retaining the last shred of guilt in him. He tries to talk to various priests to help him. The same story could have been depicted in any other religion as all the religions have some restrictions or the other on the personal lives of the priests. Christianity might have been chosen because of location (Kerala), the original screenplay or perhaps because the community is construed to be much less volatile compared to Hinduism and Islam (which actually seems to be the holy cow in India).

Ratings -
Shiny Ahuja - 6/10 - has put in a lot of effort but the fact that this was his first movies shows - there are scenes where a less hysterical performance would have done much better.
Seema Rahmani - 3/10 - wooden - someone with better acting abilities at the cost of reducing / eliminating nudity should have been chosen.
Overall - 4/10 - The film gives a feeling that much more could have been accomplished.

This is a repost - it was posted before my blogs were deleted on 27 Feb 2007