Review Summary
A movie mixed
in equal parts with romance and intrigue, artistic vibes and gloom, but found wanting
in the making department.
Directed by Arun Bose
Starring Tovino Thomas, Ahaana Krishna
Rating 2.5 /5
*Spoiler Alert
Review
The opening
credits roll by with beautiful visuals and background music, showing a man on a
bike in heavy rain – the man is a cop investigating the death of an artist and
the rain, his constant companion. When the movie opens, Luca - the eponymous hero
played by Tovino Thomas, is already dead. The cop, Akbar - played by Nithin George,
takes stock of the situation and gets the investigation rolling. The investigation
follows the stories of Luca and Niharika through the journals of Niharika. Akbar,
as we find out later, is entangled in his own weakly explained personal struggle.
He has decided to “give divorce” to his wife because he is unable to forget his
ex and would like to set the wife free. Wife is compliant with Akbar’s wishes as
they are also good friends as he keeps reiterating.
Cut to
Luca.
Luca is a
reasonably successful artist and has a brilliant installation at the Kochi Biennale,
built all from trash over months of effort and is a beautiful exhibit. Niharika,
an industrial chemistry PhD student in Kochi as part of her research, walks in
with zero knowledge or taste and well, trashes it. The artist overhears this and
quibbles and tada, hero meets heroine. This is so relatable though; people with
little insight dissing masterpieces being my current pet peeve and all. *rolls
eyes*
Anyway,
what matters is that they meet, her a precocious, hard-nosed girl and him, a
dreamer and childlike. In a classical case of opposites attract, they fall in
love, but not before an endearing friendship. Now here’s a relationship arc
that can be tagged #relationshipgoals. The ‘Ore Kannal’ song is a happy, peppy
number set to beautiful visuals which brings alive the artsy vibes of Luca’s
world and introduces it to Niha as well as the audience. Music and camera are
two nicely executed departments in this movie.
All is not
hunky dory in their world and they have their own personal demons to battle.
Niharika was
sexually abused as a child by her maternal uncle and it is portrayed through a
telling depiction of the child’s trauma and confusion. It is this bitterness
that forces her into a shell as she struggles to deal with the ordeal all by herself.
Niharika’s encounters with her abuser changes in nature overtime as she slowly
learns to stand up for herself and is able to better take care of herself. Her
dilemma though at having to act normal around her abuser in order to keep the
secret from her mother, to whom he is a pillar of strength, is a reflection of her
sad reality. How tragic it is when a child has to grow up before its time and
lose out on childhood in order to protect the parent from emotional distress. Could
this also be why girls mature faster than boys, not because it’s the law of
nature but it simply is never safe enough for a girl child?
Later when
the investigators learn about her travails from her journal, the assistant who
is also an adoptive parent is incensed and seethes resoundingly, “If ever a
child’s face is dull, the parents get so anxious thinking about what could be
the matter. Then how can blood relatives do this to a child? And how can the
parents not know ??”.
Luca, on
the other hand, struggles from phobias and panic attacks – he is phobic to
death and anything related to it. He is shown to be disturbed after seeing a dead
fish and faints after seeing a dead body. His condition is explained to have
been triggered by seeing his father’s suicide as a child and his mother’s
sudden demise in the recent past. Art is his escape and therapy from such
debilitating mental health issues. These two discordant souls fall into perfect
sync and become each other’s support systems in a short period of time.
Through it all,
Luca shines as a sweet and romantic yet vulnerable and dependent person who is at
times protected by his stronger girlfriend. As a friend, he makes her feel
welcome in his house and his world but the doors are left open because it is
her decision whether to stay or not. As a lover, he has no qualms in openly
admitting that there are more chances of her leaving him than the other way around.
And under difficult circumstances, he chooses for her to leave rather than stay
and suffer with him. In our mind-fucked world of acid attacks and other revenge
crimes in the name of love, and obsessive, toxic relationships as espoused by the
movie Kabir Singh, Luca is hope. Luca shows us a love that’s selfless, tender
and enriching.
To people
who say Kabir Singh is just a movie, don’t over analyze it – it’s regressive
enough to not want to take a second look, thank you very much. But bear with me
a second. Contrast the relationships portrayed in both movies. Here, there is friendship
and getting to know each other phase, personal space and freedom, and a relationship
on equal terms. In Kabir Singh, he decides straight away about their
relationship and warns all the other guys away, she sleepwalks into it, there
is emotional abuse and (lots of) substance abuse, and basically an owner-doormat
relationship. In the first case, characters could be reversed and the relationship
would still stand – that’s an equal relationship. In the second case, can you
think of role reversal at all? That’s why its unequal and holds zero value for the
girl.
From such
happy premises to the lead character’s sudden, unexplained death is a whodunit that
gives the movie it’s intrigue quotient. Neither the red herrings nor the actual
ending does any justice though.
Two things
stuck out from the death scene – a dead man kept lying in the rain – who does that?
Why was he not shifted inside but kept lying outside in the rain, except for
the dramatic appeal? Also, in the same scene, the cop does not get drenched as
he walks back inside without an umbrella even though it is still raining. This
quirk of the rain is seen again in another scene where the cop and his side
kick are seen having tea outdoors with rain in the background but the characters
remain untouched. In fact, the rain is so omnipresent in all of the cop scenes that
it gets downright annoying after a few scenes. It made me sick wondering how
much water was wasted to shoot those scenes when there are places like Chennai that
went into drought this summer. The rain is so ubiquitous and heavily so, that I
kept waiting for some sort of significance to crop up in the story. Other than
the allusion to the fact that the lovers did not live long enough to drench in
the rains together as they had hoped, and the cop’s personal misery, there’s
nothing else that calls for so much rain! This could have been conveyed through
a couple of actual rain shots and some shots of puddles or dripping leaves etc!?
I mean I have never been so annoyed with rains before!
Tovino lives
and breathes as Luca on screen, but the same cannot be said for Ahaana Krishna.
There were a couple of jarring cuts and the sub titles lagged behind the dialogues.
So technical department was not really up to the mark. Some dialogues sounded
too artificial like where Niha talks about feeling like her childhood had kickstarted
again and the way she explains her visit in their second encounter.
The
parallel track of Akbar’s personal life and the characters therein were not fleshed
out enough. Their dialogues felt very artificial and scripted. The clipped
conversations and stiff body language between Akbar and his wife seemed contrived.
It seems inconclusive that Akbar who goes after a mostly suicide looking death
just on a hunch, does not bother to find out why his ex left and lives on in
her memories rather than do something about it. And even that, after going
through Niharika’s journal which really talks about a until-death-do-us-apart style
love story , decides to let go of his own and move on .If it’s because it was
his wife that gave him a nudge in the right direction before the puzzle solved
itself , was that all it took ? What if that pointer had come from somewhere else,
like a colleague?
All in all,
the movie works in parts and would have worked well as a longer duration short film.
The social aspects that peeked through like adoption, child abuse, healthy
relationship etc were good. The music, visuals and art work were beautifully done.
In the end, it was a mixed bag that could have been executed way better. It had
the potential ya know!
