BOTTOM LINE
A Fluffy, Soulless Romance
PLATFORM
JioHotstar
RUNTIME
3Hrs 43Mins | 9 Episodes
What Is the Film About?
Twenty years after her parents’ love story began, Amrita faces a sudden family collapse. Following the tragic deaths of her mother, Vasudha, and her father, Neeraj, she must step up as the eldest sibling. Amidst overwhelming debt, legal crises and family grief, Amrita stops relying on her partner Aditya and takes over her father’s business to fight her battles alone.
Performances
The only real takeaway is the lead pair’s chemistry. Saurabh Raj Jain and Sheen Das look every bit the couple head-over-heels in love. While Saurabh is effective as the gentle ‘green-flag’ partner, Sheen Das lacks the gravitas or authority to steer the show on her shoulders. Smita Bansal and Khalid Siddiqui are underutilised in half-baked roles.
Analysis
Production houses like Dharma and YRF have successfully recalibrated their storytelling to stay in tune with the times, striking a reasonable balance by marrying traditional tropes with contemporary tastes. However, as a brand that struck a chord with the mainstream populace for decades, Rajshri Films has surprisingly fallen behind.
Perhaps it is a result of the production house taking its legacy a little too seriously. The conviction is missing, and the aesthetic they once pioneered has been replicated by television soap operas, leaving them with little scope to reassert their significance. Their OTT debut, Bada Naam Karenge, was a primary victim of this approach; their latest show, Sangamarmar, further validates this.
As much as it tries to conceal a lack of ideas with a larger-than-life, sophisticated setting, Sangamarmar does not feel like a story worthy of being told today. Like most of the banner’s projects (even if branded as Agra), the story unfolds in an isolated mansion amidst ‘giant’ families. It remains detached from socio-political realities, peppered with a flurry of songs and the romanticisation of patriarchy.
The show is narrated mostly as a series of flashbacks, alternating between the past and the present, where its protagonist (now a real estate baron) looks back at an eventful career born from personal and professional setbacks. The hook to the past is a romance between two neighbours that never takes a marital turn, and these nine episodes explore the obstacles they face.
Sangamarmar simply takes too long to get going. The families of the lead couple, Amrita and Aditya, are consistently lost in festivities, flaunting heavy lehengas and garish costumes in never-ending songs to establish that they are wealthy and have plenty of free time. A couple of tragedies later, Amrita realises she is leading a life built on a shaky foundation.
The story retreats to the age-old trope of the sacrificing woman: one who must surrender her desires and interests to reluctantly take charge of a crumbling family. There are bitter, toxic relatives who feign responsibility while pulling the protagonist down through gender and social norms. She is expected to tolerate the situation with grace and is glorified as a saint.
This is where the show is painfully out of touch. Why can’t a woman have it all, balancing love, career and family at once? Why is the protagonist so reluctant to put the venom out in the open instead of being a people-pleaser? Why are the lives of the couple dictated by families, leaving them with no agency? The story answers none of this, using the nostalgic 90s timeline as an excuse.
While the intent was likely to create a saga that keeps viewers hooked across episodes gradually, the damage control could have happened with sharper precision. Beyond television, the Bhansalis and Chopras have given us enough of the havelis and high-pitch family drama. Why give us what we have already seen?
A missed opportunity is the segment focusing on the mental health of Amrita and her father. You sense a larger subplot involving anxiety attacks and the need for medical advice, but it loses weight amidst loud, melodramatic events that deny any room for sensitivity or subtlety.
The upcoming episodes may explain why the Amrita-Aditya romance did not blossom and how she rebuilt her empire. Yet, it is a shame the makers dragged the setup across nine episodes to make viewers understand the stakes. Sangamarmar is ultimately a lot of fluff, taking the audience for a ride.
Music and Other Departments?
The songs by Tyson Paul are easy on the ears, though none linger. The background score is overbearing and screechy, to put it mildly. Dinesh Singh’s cinematography is an asset, though more care could have been taken to establish Agra as a backdrop beyond the Taj Mahal. The production design and costumes stay true to the Rajshri legacy, but the soap-style storytelling and flashy edits truly test a viewer’s patience.
Highlights?
The romance portions
Technical finesse
The inclusion of mental health themes
Drawbacks?
Outdated story
Dull, overlong narrative
Shallow writing and performances
Did I Enjoy It?
Not really.
Will You Recommend It?
Only if you crave a romance in the typical Rajshri style.
Sangamarmar OTT Series Reviewed by M9 News
