Critics’ Verdict: ‘Waiting’ Is Worth Your Time

Naseeruddin Shah and Kalki starrer ‘Waiting’ should be on your list of movies to watch this weekend

Film: Waiting
Director: Anu Menon
Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Kalki Koechlin

...apart from a few wobbles, Waiting walks the line between emotional resonance and emotional manipulation skilfully. Hospitals, whether on the big or small screen, are usually used for their dramatic possibilities: IV demanded “stat”, failing hearts electro-shocked into life. How curious that someone glimpsed, in the same setting, the emotional possibilities of inaction, of waiting.

Uday Bhatia (LiveMint.com)

Naseeruddin Shah captures his character’s nuances within the limitations of the screenplay. Kalki Koechlin has a tougher time as Tara. Her character is too emotionally fraught and petulant to be endearing. Waiting is too sparsely plotted to realise its ambitions, but Menon, who has co-written the film with James Ruzicka, does raise important questions on the dilemmas faced by the family members of comatose patients. Who decides the treatment methods, and when is it time to stop waiting and move on? A less neat and more rigorously written movie would have waited for the uncomfortable answers to these knotty questions to come less easily.

Nandini Ramnath (Scroll.in)

Stray grouses apart, the insightfully etched ensemble of characters – matched by a flawless performance by Naseeruddin Shah and an exceptionally spirited one by Kalki Koechlin -- form the narrative’s sturdiest backbone. Disclosing considerable growth from her first film – the eminently forgettable Ali Zafar-Aditi Rao Hydari roam-com London New York Paris (2012) – director Menon doesn’t cater to commercial tastes at all.  That mandatory romantic frisson is conspicuous by its absence.  A huge round of applause, then, for avoiding compromises. Or else, the low-key, observant style would have worked at total cross-purposes with the theme of human bondage.Of course, the trade totalitarians would ask: But what use is a niche film which won’t rain big bucks at the cash counters? Answer: A good film like Waiting which has a sensitive story to tell and has been made on a cost-effective budget, is abundant proof that cinema is about making money, sure, but not necessarily filthy lucre.

Khalid Mohamed (Spotboye.com)

Naseeruddin Shah, who has admitted on occasion, that if he has done films like Tridev or more recently, a Welcome Back or Teraa Surroor, the motivation comes in the form of a cheque. But here, a lot more drives his character. Naseer’s Shiv is relentless, resolute and refreshingly irreverent. But this film belongs to Kalki, who impresses by managing to wordlessly convey her character’s state of mind in every scene. The film deserves a watch for being one that doesn’t try too hard and for its approach to an extreme situation. Sure, there’s a lot of sobbing, resentment and much of ‘what if’ and ‘I should have’. But there’s also reasoning, acceptance and the ability to envision a life beyond the catastrophic event.

Kunal Guha (MumbaiMirror.com)