Gauraiya Live Review: A heart-rending film!

GAURAIYA LIVE

Producers- Rahul Rangare, Nishant Jain and Rohit Raj Singh Chouhan

Director- Gabriel Vats

Cast- Pankaj Jha, Omkar Das Manikpuri, Seema Saini, Ada Singh, Riddhi Gupta, Aarav Rangare

Platform of Release- Theatres

Rating:

By Jyothi Venkatesh

In 2006, the entire nation watched five-year-old Kurukshetra boy Prince’s battle for life and prayed for his rescue when he fell down a 60-foot-deep borewell. Director and writer Gabriel Vats mounts his movie ‘Gauraiya Live’ on a similar incident in Madhya Pradesh’s capital, Bhopa.

The offbeat film Gauraiya is based on true incidents with an imaginary story of north India situated in the desert area of Patha, which is a place of downtrodden and poor people who are victimized by bandits and other criminals. The reason behind is only unemployment and illiteracy revolves around the real-life story of a construction site worker’s young daughter after she falls down into an 80-foot-deep borewell.

As the small kid stays trapped there for nearly 30 hours, doctors, police officers, army men, and labourers team up to rescue her. The movie is about whether they save her and how the incident reflects the real side of politicians and builders.

The slow-paced film which has a wafer-thin story, deals with the survival drama of young Gauraiya (Ada Singh), who lives at a construction site with her poor father, Rampal (Omkar Das Manikpuri), mother (Seema Saini), elder sister (Riddhi Gupta), and younger brother (Aarav Rangare). While the first half of the film takes the viewer through Gauraiya’s background and family’s difficult circumstances, the latter part highlights how callous humans can be even during a tragedy.

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Though at 111 minutes, the screenplay moves at a very even pace, the recurring flashbacks break its flow throughout and also are repetitive as they keep on appearing through the songs. The rescue mission, when the army men and Rampal’s co-workers team up to save the tiny tot Gauraiya, wraps up in just the last 10-odd minutes.

As far as the performances of this film which does not boast of any well-known star cast is concerned, Omkar Das Manikpuri shines as the father torn between his love for his three children trying to make ends meet and delivers a good performance.

Ada Singh, as the protagonist, performs within the short span in which she is seen on frame. The slow-paced heart rending movie ends up with a lot of statistics and examples of how children as young as three and four continue to suffer due to negligence and unsafe construction sites and creates a deep impact.