Mumbai Meri Jaan : Visual methphors one on one

Among the usual barrage of thrash and pulp cinema that is produced in our country, every year after year, once in a while a little gem comes out and goes un-noticed, its like fishing in the deep ocean, most of the time you will catch a lot of sardines, but then if you wait long enough – you might end up hooking a Tuna,
and this is turning out to be a good year as there had been more than a couple of Tuna's- starting with Mithya, Via Darjeeling, Shaurya, Aamir to name the few, but this month, mid monsoon, the years biggest catch came along in form of Mumbai Meri Jaan..i can go on and on about the film, but for the first time in this year, I actually concur with all that has been written by the critique about this film..therefore instead of the review, I thought of something else, once I was done watching this film, I pulled out the little blue notebook that I have, and started the movie all over again..only this time pausing it in the middle every now and then and taking notes on it..and what I saw the second time was even more profound than the first time,This film is laced with brilliant Visual Metaphors ..few very explicit and few very subtle. Following is the list of all that I was able to catch (I am sure there would be a few more which I missed)
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But before you read up any further, let me forewarn you about the spoilers , so if you haven't seen this film and you are planning to see it any time soon..now will be a good time to click on column on images displayed on the right (your right) side of this page which will take you to my Flickr photo stream.
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****SPOILERS*****

1. Once the blast in the local train happens, you can see a body fly in the air and hit a pillar with the number 7/11 on it.

2. When the colleagues of Rupali (Soha Ali Kahan)come to her place after the death of her fiancée, the scene starts with their (all three of them including Rupali) reflection on the television screen in her living room(Rupali works as a news correspondent for a Television channel). Later when Rupali agrees to become a part of the report that the channel is planning to highlight her loss, the TV executives shake her hands and stand up, you can see Rupali's face reflecting on the floor on which both the executives step on as they are walking out of the house.

3. After Kadam(Vijay Murya) is warned by his senior officer, right after he has arrested the couple doing drugs, Kadam walks out of the police station, Tukaram(Paresh Rawal) follows him out- in the next shot, you can see Kadams reflection in the rear view mirror of a vehicle as he walks away, the scene acknowledges the frustration kadam is going through as Kadams reflection looks framed, indicating that his life is restrained, the four side of the rear view mirror doubles up as a two dimensional jail Kadam is living in .

4. Suresh (Key Key Menon) a racist, is shown wearing a T-shirt with NAZI symbol printed on it, the scene goes on to show how ignorant and single dimensional Suresh is as on one side he maintains that there is only one religion that is responsible for all the violence in the world, he himself wears a T-shirt, the symbol on which reminds you of the army, which became infamous because of there atrocities at the time of 2nd World war..and wanted to rule the world.

5. When Nikhil(R.Madhvan) has a dream in which he sees his apartment blowing up because of the gas leak, right after the explosion, as Nikhil is lying injured on the floor, you can see he is not able to use one of his hand, just like his friend who was in the first class compartment when one of the serial bomb exploded in the train, and Nikhil's friend looses his arm.

6. After the Tamil coffee vendor(Irfan Khan) realizes his mistake after witnessing a senior citizen almost loosing his life due to the prank played by him( Hoax phone calls).The coffee vendor is taken over by guilt and he goes home, while the same news is playing on Television, he takes the lamp and directly looks into the light and then breaks down completely, the scene is very straight forward and shows that the coffee vendor saw the light (redemption) in the darkness (helplessness, hatred and guilt) that surrounds him.

7. When Suresh gets picked up by Tukaram in the police van, you can see his face reflecting in the window glass right behind Tukaram, bringing forth the dualism in Suresh's personality, cause just few seconds earlier, the scene establishes Suresh wearing a NAZI T-shirt, also the same scene again uses Forced Perspective to juxtapose Suresh reflection with Tukaram's face ,reckoning two entirely different faces of humanity.


This are the few of metaphors I was able to notice, feel free to add anything that I have missed once you have seen the film.