I went to movie before I could read any reviews which is a practice I follow to avoid nonsense movies. So the comments I am making right now can be considered unbiased.
The first half was terrific. It was gripping and beyond my imagination. Each scene, sequence was unthinkable and unknown and that’s what I like about a movie. This was a different and unknown world and I had to throw all prejudices whatsoevr to understand the concept of the movie. As I said, the experience was exhilariting and everybody in the cinema-hall seemed to be shell-shocked. However I was so impressed with whatever I was watching, that as soon as I came out in the interval, I called up my friend who is also a movie freak and told him that finally we have got a movie in the Indian cinema which is going to change all the predefined moulds. I asked him to watch this movie the very next day.
As I expected a lot better next half and went with a lot more curiosity, for some time I endured the sequences but after a period of time, I begin to feel what the hell it is…And there were many reasons:
1. I and similar to me others got very confused with the entire sequence of second half. I had no idea how K reached Ajarbaijaan. If in the end, it was about “aatma”, how come people like K were able to see them? What’s all that confusion about her dead wife and secretary and their so-called role-playing sequence? I also could not understand the significance of shower sequence.
2. The movie was too long. The kind of genre and type of movie it was, I felt exhausted long before movie ended. Some people left in between which is very rare for a movie I saw ever. In the end too, people couldn’t wait movie to end and started leaving thinking it has ended. Bipasha Basu song was simply wasted. Very few people were there in theater to watch that song and even then it looked completely wasted. In my view you should have edited the movie for at least 20-25 minutes and it should have been 1-1/2 hour movie max. I like the way RGV made Nishabd. Crisp, concise and with no-frills.
3. Too many songs. In a movie like this, songs seem to be like dampener. One or two thematic songs could be enough but more than that was just dragging the movie.
You might be having abundance of ideas but it’s not necessary to put them all in a movie. You need to understand the mind of a movie-goer also. Human mind can take one thing at a time. Also it gets exhausted after a period of time. So, unrelated sequences, too many ideas may not make a great movie. It’s necessary to understand the dynamics of crisp and concise words. Simple things work. This is a rule. Even for a subject as bizarre as NS, things would have worked, if you could avoid that much of confusion from the audience.
In my view, our viewers cannot become thinking audience in a night. The attempt was as harsh to Indian audience as it was for K in the movie. In foreign movies, I have seen that some of thinking part is never explained. You need to understand that. To that I would say, the second part was even an overdose for such an audience and Indian audience haven’t experience such a thing before.
Even after saying so many negative things, I would like acknowledge that this is a landmark attempt for Indian cinema. Though I felt exhausted after watching the movie, I felt good to be part of such an attempt. It’s just that I would have felt happier to watch a landmark movie which it could not because of above mentioned reasons.
