Problems on the road

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: After a long wait the much anticipated Highway has hit the theatres. The movie that has five stories begins with lahure (Dayahang Rai) taking medicine from a renowned vaidya of Illam who tells him to have sex after 36 hours to have a baby. He has been married to his wife Radhika (Asha Magarati) for four years and she is in Kathmandu. So, this lahure gets on a bus to Kathmandu where the passengers are from all walks of life. As the bus begins to move ahead, it is caught in a bandh. To get out from the bandh, the lahure gets Pooja (Shristi Ghimire) and Pratiek (Eelum Dixit) to pretend as a bride and groom. They successfully skirt this bandh but are caught in another bandh.

And Highway has tried to put light on the problems of five different people on this bus, and other characters linked with them.

Everyone has problems in their relationships. Radhika has an extra marital affair with Neeraj (Vinay Shrestha), Pratiek is a homosexual, Pooja is caught in between two loves — Ronit (Saugat Malla) and Aviral (Karma), Dr Prem (Rabindra Mishra) is going through a divorce, and more.

The subject matter of Highway represents the modern Nepali society where director Deepak Rauniyar has maintained the audience’s curiosity. But, the attempt to present the stories of characters overcrowded into a time slot of two-and-a-half hours is not such a good idea as it creates confusion in his audience’s minds. The story revolves around relationships of different characters. Some of them are shown recalling and thinking different incidents related to their life. But the audience gets distracted and confused as they have to think really hard to know what is happening with each character. The director has failed to be clear and succinct about what is happening with a particular

character. There is an open ending to the stories and the director has left it to the audience to figure out what could or should happen in the end, and it is quite disappointing.

However, the scenarios and natural beauty captured during the journey on the highway has been portrayed in a lively way. Even the traffic jams in Kathmandu at night looks beautiful.

Actors Rai, Dixit, Magarati, and Ghimire have justified their respective roles by acting their parts in a natural way. But most of the scenes with Mishra seem unnecessary.

At times, the background score used in the movie tends to be a bit too noisy. The dialogues improvised by the actors are weak.

The movie leaves you confused and disappointed

considering all the

expectations.