A man’s struggle for identity can be an absorbing story. Uplifting even, if it is connected with a country’s freedom struggle. Gour Hari’s ‘dastaan’, based on the quest of a real-life character, has all the elements that could have made it all this and more, but it comes off flat and dull.

Gour Hari Dastaan: The Freedom File is a very solemn, very onerous, very sanctimonious harangue about many, many things. All things, in fact. But at its core it’s a film about director Anant Mahadevan and writer C.P. Surendran (a senior journalist) desperately wanting to burnish and shove their credentials as people with a conscience, as people who care and worry about important things in our faces.

While the film does struggle with a slow pace and certain irrelevant characters and scenes that digress from the core subject, this biopic deserves to be seen.

...despite this film’s relatively restrained storytelling, sincere attempt at subtlety, and overwhelmingly wonderful intentions, it falters on a number of levels. Gour Hari Dastaan is a peculiar film — one that attempts to emulate a somewhat dated style of arthouse cinema that works only in bits and parts. The rest of the time, at best, it’s a bit of a snooze-fest; at worst, in some places, it’s so far off the mark that it almost works as parody.

As you watch the talented but largely anchorless actor Vinay Pathak slip easily into the part of the real-life freedom fighter Gaur Hari Das , you feel he is holding back when he could easily let go. The same is true of Ananth Narayan Mahadevan’s noble bio-pic.

As a director, Ananth Mahadevan is sincere in his approach. He portrays the subject with complete honesty. And it is this uprightness that makes the film a powerful and appealing saga.

'Gour Hari Dastaan' is powerful, meaningful, inspiring, probing and appealing highly recommended for lovers of good cinema and a true Indian. Do not miss.

After being kicked out by his wife, the said journo finds love in a colleague (Tannistha Chatterjee) who doesn't do much except following Shorey around and discussing his angst and his work.The dour performances don't help either. Neither does the thick, gloomy air of the film. While the story is electrifying and inspiring, the film doesn't manage to do justice. Too bad, really.