The bigger tragedy than the tragedy on screen was the one off it: there were only eight people in the movie theatre.
Neeraj Pandey’s first foray into romance is not as awful as what the reviews tell you. It has its high moments: how can it not when you have the exceptionally involved Tabu and Ajay Devgan helming a love story that is designed as an epic. That it fails to reach its goal is unfortunate. Nonetheless, Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha (what an inapt title!) is an honourable failure, and one that I suspect will garner more respect as time goes by.
For now the problems with the film seem glaring and insurmountable The pacing is uneven and awkward , sometimes bordering on the self-destructive. Edito Praveen Kathikuloth needed to excercize much more discipline and austerity. Who signs Devgan and Tabu to play intense inseparable lovers and then squanders precious time on a prison drama where Devgan gets a chance to do what he is loved for: beat up the baddies , and never mind if the screenplay is seriously injured.
I wonder what got into director Neeraj Pandey to desecrate his beautiful portrait of selfless love with so much digression that it hurts! It is like investing into one movie experience, only to be told to proceed to another due to technical reasons.
Auron Mein… will be remembered for being one of the most self-destructive love stories ever told in a film form. At times I thought I was watching two films in one. Then Pandey’s direction and screenplay (both in dire need of fumigation) would swerve back on the right track, so that it felt like something special from the director of Special Chabbis.
Then Neeraj Pandey would again go back to his exasperating clunkiness hijacking the Tabu-Devgan epic romance into a terribly compromised , corrupted and confounding quagmire.
The worst blow to the film’s retarded resonance is the casting of Shantanu Maheshwari and Saee Manjrekar as the younger version of Devgan and Tabu.
Firstly, they look nothing like the two senior players. And even if they did, why cast different actors in the two separate spheres in the lovers’ lives? Surely a bit of photo-shopping would have de-aged the two seasoned stalwarts into their younger avatar? I know Neeraj Pandey has seen Past Lives. Hasn’t he seen Irish Man where Robert di Nero and Al Pacino play younger versions of themselves?
Not that the younger leads are all bad in Auron Mein… In crucial prison-meet sequence Maheshwari is commendably anguished. But I found it hard to believe that he and Manjrekar were playing the same characters that Tabu and Devgan were. Suspension of disbelief is fine. But this was a fatal blunder.
The final blow to the potential brilliancy of a headstrong derailed story is M. M Keeravani’s backround music and songs. To say Keeravani’s compositions are a disappointment would not be enough. Keeravani ruins Manoj Muntashir’s ambrosial lyrics with vapid tunes. His background score is ever worse. He over-punctuates every sequence to the extent of destroying the emotional impact. This is specially truly of a flashback sequence of violence involving the young Vasudha. The sequence occurs three times in 150 minutes. Each time Keeravani hammers the drama with exaggerated sounds.
The undying love theme needed a song like Tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa toh nahin. It gets nowhere close.
The post interval section with its intersectional confab among Krishna (Devgan), Basudha (Tabu) and her husband Abhijeet (Jimmy Sheirgil) borrows generously from the brilliant Korean film Past Lives. This is the best part of the storytelling with the least extraneous intervention, except for someone called Meenal repeating interrupting the three-way conversation among the man who ruins his life for love, the woman who lets him, and the man who marries her.
In a film plagued by inconsistency Devgan is consistently in character. Tabu’s face is the map of the human heart and the one time when she has the opportunity to display her skills, she is called away by the wretched Meenal.
Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha could have been so much better without the rude interruptions. I waited patiently for Tabu and Devgan to come together after every long and arduous separation. I doubt the audience would be that indulgent.
