Subhash K Jha, in this new edition of This Day That Year, shines the spotlight on a film that long before Housefull 5, Ram Gopal Varma tried the two-ending gimmick with 2005’s My Wife’s Murder, which he produced that released in 2005.
Pushing the envelope comes easy to Ram Gopal Varma, especially in a film that’s about a man being pushed around by his wife to the point of no return. Anil Kapoor gets an opportunity to play the harassed husband and protective papa all over again.
This methodical actor slips into the role of the distraught husband with an almost discernible whoop of joy. Some moments of this thriller about a loser on the run shake your soul. Others just leave you cold. At the end of the dreadful day, My Wife’s Murder is a film that’s cold at heart. The icy-cold feeling of a life lived in the wedge of emotional disintegration is well conveyed by Anil.
Also, the authenticity of the locations helps. The office where Ravi Patwardhan works with his petite assistant (Nandana Sen), the congested but cosy flat where he returns dog tired to his children and nagging wife…even the locales where he tries to conceal his guilt and remorse after accidentally murdering his loud wife…These add a wad of whopping brownie points to debutant director Jijy Philips’ subverted thriller about an accidental murder.
Impeccably shot by K.V. Vinod, the film’s only fault, if one may call it that, is that it’s a thriller without thrills or frills. Portions of the film are shot as an absorbing whodunit…the juxtaposition of Ravi desperately trying to clean his dead wife’s blood on the bedroom floor as the maid cleans the vessels in the kitchen, or that ironically fraught sequence where the protagonist drives out with his wife’s body stuffed into a TV carton, are quite different from the didactic dimensions that Varma’s productions generate in the endeavour to bring lives on the brink to life.
In certain vital ways, Varma allows his debutant director to go against the grain of his cinema. There are emotional moments particularly those pertaining to the trauma of the murdered woman’s children that stir the storytelling. But the film never goes far enough in search of the cornered man’s lacerated soul. We’ve seen a traumatised man in Varma’s Gayab being bullied into virtual oblivion by his mother. The anonymous man in this film seems more of a loser as his life is untouched by magic and fantasy.
It’s Boman Irani’s studied and yet slyly spontaneous turn as the cop investigating the domestic tragedy that brings the film to optimum fruition. An actor of unending resources, Boman creates a cop who’s cocky, capricious, riveting, and occasionally repulsive. The brief glimpse into the cop’s home life, replete with a surly nagging wife, gives the narrative a delicious twist of agonised irony. While portions of the narration heighten the dark domestic drama, other segments featuring Nandana Sen and her live-in friend (Rajesh Tandon) attempt to bring the film’s original thriller format to heel.
As Ravi Patwardhan, the consummate every-man with everyday fears, nightmares and insecurities, runs from the law, the editing gets progressively frantic. Parts of the second-half are done almost at the pace of a tele-film. Oh yes, a word on Suchitra Krishnamurthy’s brief and shrill turn as a household harridan. She gets the dead woman’s expression dead-on.
The film, obviously about a wife’s murder, initially had two endings. The first was called Jaan Bujhke, where Anil Kapoor’s character kills his wife on purpose. The other was called Galti Se, where Kapoor kills his wife by mistake.
The Telugu version of the film sparked off a controversy, and Ram Gopal Varma decided to do away with the two Hindi versions and release only one version. “The Telugu version did spark off protests. But the difference between the Telugu and Hindi versions is that in the former, the husband purposely planned his wife’s death. The tagline — Ever Wished Your Wife Was Dead? — got the moralists uptight. The Hindi version is different. Here, the husband accidently kills the wife. I had earlier planned to release two versions of the same story Galti Se and Jaan Bujhke were like two sides of a coin. I thought two endings for the same story was an idea that had never been done before. But finally, we abandoned it. The idea of making this film is to show the traumatic emotional journey the husband goes through after he kills his wife. I haven’t directed My Wife’s Murder. It’s as worthy of enormous eyeballs as Sarkar. It’s the first production where the story idea is mine. When I conceived the story, I wasn’t married. So the idea was original. Forget about killing one’s wife, one wishes many times that one weren’t married at all. It’s to do with being nagged, incessantly told what to and what not to do. No one likes that. Anil Kapoor co-produced My Wife’s Murder. When I first met him to narrate the story, he immediately wanted to produce it. We plan to produce more films together.”
My Wife’s Murder was pitched against Suneel Darshan’s Barsaat.
Ramu was unpertubed . “I know nothing about Barsaat. I don’t think two or even three films affect the box office. But I like to see women getting drenched in the rain. So to that extent, I like Barsaat. But if the women in the rain are accompanied by a family drama then, sorry, that isn’t my scene. It isn’t that kind of a film. It’s got a different feel and flavour. It’s a film that goes beyond sex and the bed — straight into the head.
Adding, “I met Suchitra through her husband Shekhar Kapur who’s a close friend of mine. She had a strong personality. I remember she had called me after Daud and said it was a horrible film. That’s when I decided I’d one day take revenge on her by casting her in one of my films. Nandana Sen was my director Jijy Philip’s choice. I think he saw her in a commercial.Where does Jijy Philip come from? He assisted me in Bhoot. He used to work in a television channel before. He came to interview me, joined me as an assistant and never went back to his work. One day, I narrated my story idea and he decided to work on it for three months. I feel the emotional hookline of My Wife’s Murder and the sudden eruption of violence between a married couple are things everyone would identify with. And the way Jijy shot the film is truly international.”
