Go Watch ‘Goodbye’ and Mourn Those Who Bid Us Farewell in the Past Two Years

Goodbye

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Neena Gupta, Rashmika Mandanna, Ashish Vidyarthi, Sunil Grover, Pavail Gulati, Elli AvrRam, Sahil Mehta, Abhishekh Khan  

Direction: Vikas Bahl  

Rating: ★★★

Showing in theaters  

Death. Grief. Mourning.   

Over the past two years, many of us have been bereaved. We lost our loved ones. Our friends lost family members. Our distant relatives, old colleagues, dear neighbors, teachers passed away. People we admired died suddenly. We watched a sea of humanity suffer, gasp and die.  

To mourn those we knew, we got on Zoom calls and watched last rites being streamed live. And if we could, we wore masks, sat at a safe distance in prayer halls, spoke through masks and then returned home to sanitize everything.   

Now, as life slowly hobbles back to a new kind of normalcy, one where we carry masks but wear them less, meet friends, go out, but remain apprehensive of human contact, it’s time for some collective mourning. It’s time to shed tears for all those we lost, and for those small parts of ourselves that died, too.       

Goodbye, written and directed by Vikas Bahl, wants us, and helps us, to do that.  

Most of Goodbye is set in Chandigarh, but it begins at a nightclub in Mumbai. Tara Bhalla (Rashmika Mandanna), a lawyer, is celebrating her first win. The next morning, when a waiter returns her phone that she forgot, he also relays the message that her father left for her.    

Goodbye informs us of the sudden death of Mrs Gayatri Bhalla, W/O Harish Bhalla, and R/O Chandigarh, and casts us as the bereaved.  

Flight tickets are expensive. Should Tara’s Muslim boyfriend go or not?  

As Tara prepares to go home and stares at the many messages from her mother she did not respond to, we meet her father, Harish (Amitabh Bachchan), at their Chandigarh home.  

Sitting at the edge of his and Gayatri’s bed, he looks lost, in shock. His body seems to be processing the grief, but his mind is busy with the many things that need to be done.   

He writes down things to do in his diary as the maid requests him to eat.   

Karan (Pavail Gulati) and Angad (Sahil Mehta) have been informed, and are on their way. Nakul (Abhishekh Khan) is not answering his phone.   

Big slabs of ice need to be bought, a pandit has to be organized, an ambulance must be booked. And then there’s Gayatri’s father who needs to be informed.   

Harish doesn’t want to eat, but asks the maid to find his slippers that he is wearing.   

He is sad that Gayatri has died. He is angry that the kids are not around, that they don’t answer their phone. He is grieving for himself and is confused about life ahead, which looks lonely and bleak.  

His eyes are open, but he only wants to see the past.   

In flashback we meet Gayatri (Neena Gupta) – wife, mother, friend, mediator, morning walker. A woman who drank, laughed, remembered everyone’s birthdays and anniversaries, kept everyone together, created a family.   

This scene, with Bachchan sitting and writing things in his diary, the dog refusing to eat, a glass of orange juice lying untouched, is the film’s heart, quite literally. All scenes hereafter are nourished by the grief that Bachchan cradles in his eyes, his hands, his body, his confused look.  

Outside, neighbors begin to gather. Gayatri’s morning-walk friends arrive. One uncleji (Ashish Vidyarthi) takes charge of what needs to be done because he knows what needs to be done. A pandit rattles off a long list of stuff that’s required. There’s talk of tehravi, aatma, mukti, crows.   

Someone insists on the direction the body’s head should be in and they begin moving it accordingly. The ice blocks melt.   

Tara arrives and her pleas that her mother didn’t believe in reeti-riwaaz are ignored. Karan arrives chatting into his ear-pods. Papa doesn’t like it but understands his son’s work pressure, not his daughter’s.  

A neighbor whose legs are going numb by sitting on the floor eyes a chair. We listen to a discussion among the colony ladies about who will cook what.
As Goodbye moves forward, it keeps going back to show us how the Bhallas were when Gayatri was alive.    

We go to the cremation ground and wait. We travel with the Bhallas and the asthi kalash to Benaras. We meet a designer Panditji (Sunil Grover), watch his computer presentation about why Hindus immerse ashes in the Ganga, listen to a lecture about science versus faith.  

We laugh and wonder whether Karan should shave his hair or not.   

When Goodbye leaves the house, it meanders and becomes filmy. There are silly, superfluous scenes. A ukulele is brought out and it seems to mean something, but doesn’t. To keep us engaged and emotional, the film uses rousing chants of “Jaikal Mahakal” (a lesser rendition of that fabulous Ganesh aarti from Mahesh Manjrekar’s Vaastav). But when the film returns home, it again regains some of its power.   

There’s a strange thing about Goodbye – it’s powerful in parts but patchy as well. The movie’s first half is strong, funny and sharply written and directed, but after the interval it often flatlines. And yet, even when I could see how tacky a particular scene was, how bad some actors or their lines were, I could not stop crying. Even when Goodbye made me laugh, or it bored me, I cried.  

Vikas Bahl, the Queen director who was accused of sexual assault by a young woman employee at Phantom Films in 2015, has been picking up emotional subjects since then. There was Super 30 in 2019, and now this.   

Goodbye’s screenplay is very smart. And the clue to its intent – to make us mourn – lies in the fact that Bahl does not dwell on how Gayatri died. It stays focused on making us grieve. 
The film keeps its tone funny while making sure the emotional quotient stays high. And as it does this, it touches a raw nerve that needs healing.  

Goodbye makes us go through the whole rigmarole of Hindu mourning and cremation. We observe the mundanity without judgment, wonder about the rituals and rules of abstinence so that Gayatri’s aatma can get mukti.   

It makes us sit with Harish and Tara to mourn Gayatri’s passing. We listen to sudden outbursts about things in the past and present. Like Daisy (Elli AvrRam), we glare at Karan when he, yet again, says into his ear-pods that he’s “trying to wrap it all up quickly and get back.”  

Goodbye repeatedly debates faith versus science, and to our satisfaction, celebrates rituals as necessary accessories for grieving.   

Despite its flaws, the film holds because of its story, believable and appealing characters played by good actors, and because it observes life around death with tears and a smile.  

Sunil Grover is a very versatile, very fine actor. But here he is cast as a fairytale, mythical sort of character. He’s cool and he shines, but doesn’t quite gel.   

Rashmika Mandanna is lovely and has a very sweet, warm presence. But she speaks with her teeth clenched and has a very pronounced accent.   

Divya Seth as Gayatri’s morning-walk partner is brilliant. Neena Gupta plays dead very well, and when she is living, she lights up the film.  

But Goodbye really belongs to Amitabh Bachchan who doesn’t speak much, and yet holds the entire film with his eyes and silence. In several scenes, his grief becomes our grief.    

Go watch Goodbye to mourn those who have passed. Weep for those you could not touch, see. And say goodbye to those who aren’t there anymore, but you are still holding on to.   

P.S. Arun Bali, a veteran actor best remembered for his portrayal of Kunwar Singh in the movie Swabhimaan, passed away on Friday at the age of 79. He played Neena Gupta’s father in Goodbye.