There were five people in the movie theatre, three of them with me, laughing from the very beginning of this weird rom-gone. If I didn’t know any better, I would see (you see, this film is all about seeing, or not seeing, or pretending not see, or whatever) Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan (AKG) as a rip-roaring comedy, a satire on all those intense love stories from the past which we have devoured repeatedly? Or perhaps a spoof on the ongoing debate on nepotism versus outside talent?
Sadly, AKG is none of the above. It takes itself so seriously, that I really felt sorry for the absolutely negative feelings that the product evokes. But, the fact is—and all five of us watching the film will vouch for this—the very basic premise of the plot is laughably ludicrous: a girl sets off on a train journey all alone with her eyes covered in a mask.
Sabaa (newcomer Shanaya Kapoor with her probable talent duly masked) is a method actress practising to play a blind girl. On the train, she meets a blind man (a real one), Jahaan(Vikrant Massey, this is his real 12th Fail), who, for reasons unknown to humanity, doesn’t tell the blindfolded girl that he is blind.
From the word go, every move that the couple makes is questionable and ersatz. The film’s motives are fake, the train on which they meet is fake, and together they head to Mussoorie (why, why, why?). But there is little of the hill station visible on screen. Most of the time, the irreparably asinine pair is indoors, yapping yapping yapping…one blindfolded, the other blind, both braindead, as far as we can, errr, see.
The second half moves to a foreign country where Jahaan, now christened Kabir (why?), keeps bumping into Sabaa. Nothing has changed. This is one of the most headstrong films in recent years (and I don’t mean that in any positive way). Sabaa continues to wear her eye mask even when her prep for the role is over, for a reason only she can explain.
Jahaan continues to write bad songs, which he insists are instant classics waiting to be discovered by the world.
Quite like the makers of this film, who seem to believe they have made an intense love story which the world would one day embrace. Kagaz ke fool?
The film is noticeably cramped in its spatial aspirations. For most of the narrative, we see only the two lovers looking (in a manner of speaking) into the crisis of not being able to look at one another. Midway, a third character, the Understanding Boyfriend (played by Zain Khan Durrani), shows up with a transfixed expression of a man wiser beyond his years.
Exactly what he is so wise about, we don’t know. Maybe he knows something about the film’s raison d’être that we don’t.
Ditto the film, which seems to move in mysterious ways, encircling the couple seductively. But the mating game never goes beyond sightless courtship and brainless drama. The problem with this couple, which they cannot see (ahem), is that they have no problem. I still don’t know why Jahaan and Sabaa are hellbent on tormenting the knickers out of one another, and in torturing the hell out of the audience.
We appreciate the film’s literary antecedents (Ruskin Bond, no less). But the treatment of the meagre story is inflated, improbable, and intolerable. So sorry, this is just not happening.
