Blu-ray Review: Saawariya

THE MOVIE: 2 1/2 stars out of 5

Saawariya is described in the liner notes accompanying the disc a romantic Bollywood musical from the acclaimed director Sanjay Leela Bhansall. Essentially, it is a tale of two individuals, one a man and the other a woman awaiting the arrival of their true loves. For Raj, his true love is Sakina, who unfortunately for Raj, is awaiting the arrival of the mysterious Imaan, who Raj does not think even exists. The story is set in a small dreary town in the mountains in India and is told from through the perspective of a local prostitute. The movie was filmed on a rather lavish looking soundstage and is visually very impressive with bright blue and purple the dominate colors and features some stunningly beautiful women. However, I felt that the story kinda of dragged and the music was very ordinary, simple and repetitive, lacking the originality and sophistication of the better musicals out there. The story itself was way too predictable and the film too long with way too much of what is traditionally described as filler on a musical album, placed there to stretch out the length of the film. The main audio track is in Hindi with a lot of English thrown in. There is a lot of filler here and far too few singles. It was also really unusual to listen to dialogue where one half of a phrase or sentence is in Hindi and the other half in English. While the movie is beautifully filmed with excellent audio fidelity, the actual story falls a good bit short for my tastes. Hence, I can only rate this one as a rental.

THE VIDEO: 5 stars out of 5

While I have some problems with the story, I have none at all with the video presentation here. In fact, it is one of the best looking HD films I have ever seen. The film is encoded with AVC and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2:40:1 and looks spectacular. The color palette is very bold and vibrant yet with very natural looking colors that are perfectly rendered. Skin tones are spot on as are black levels which are very deep, giving the film a totally three dimensional look. Detail and shadow detail is extraordinary and the clarity of the image is simply off the charts. All I can say is the video presentation here is nearly perfect. It is that good and reference in every way. I just wish that all films looked this good.

THE AUDIO: 5 stars out of 5

The main audio track is presented in Hindi Dolby True HD and is every bit as good as the video. The dialogue track has excellent fidelity with each voice captured beautifully and realistically and capturing the acoustic environment perfectly. The overall sound of the film is rich and lush and totally transparent without even the hint of hardness or edginess. The sound stage here is the most open and wide I have ever heard in a home theater environment, completely filling the entire room with sound of incredible fidelity. While I was not a big fan of the music in this film, it was presented with such incredible fidelity that I think it fair to say that there are many sound engineers who could learn a thing or two about how movies should sound listening to this release. This is amazing stuff and of reference quality. Well done.

IN CONCLUSION

While I can’t really recommend this film artistically, I can recommend it aesthetically as this is easily one of the best, if not the best, looking and sounding film you can find out there on Blu-Ray. If you want to see and hear reference quality audio and video, give this film a rental.

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