ANDHADHUN

A blind man with excellent piano-playing skills is embroiled in a Hitchcock-ian thriller where he ‘witnesses’ an aging actor’s middle-aged wife kill people right in front of his non-functioning eyes.

Since this is a murder-mystery thriller, let me give you a spoiler alert: blame the rabbit.

The one-eyed, dirt-coloured computer-generated bunny is a part of the film’s opening sequence, and the trailer. But that’s all I’ll be telling you. If anything, this little bit of information will keep one’s interest piqued when one goes to see Andhadhun, director Sriram Raghavan’s latest film since Badlapur.

Things are not what they seem in Sriram Raghavan’s brilliantly directed Andhadhun. The Salman Khan production LoveYatri, however, is as safe as safe can be

Raghavan — who also directed the near-excellent Ek Hasina Thi once-upon-a-time before going full-(idiotic)-commercial with Agent Vinod, may have held a séance to recall Hitchcock’s soul for a consultation gig. Or he may have actually studied a lot of the master-director’s films. Either way, the result is immaculate.

Like Hitchcock’s The Rope or Strangers On A Train, there isn’t much of a mystery in the whodunit department, yet Andhadhun (a good play on words, by the way) keeps the audience on their toes by making characters and events deliciously evil. Even in moments that should evoke sympathy, one instinctively knows people are manipulating things for their convenience.

The film, by the way, is an adaptation of a French short titled L’Accordeur (aka The Piano Tuner). In the adaptation process, Raghavan and fellow writers (Arijit Biswas, Pooja Ladha Surti, Yogesh Chandekar, Hemant Rao) employ a lightning fast pace which takes a breather at the right moments. In fact, Andhadhun is a rarity because, even after its intermission break — which is where, historically, films falter — the thrill barely dips.

This calculated pacing allows Raghavan’s leads Tabu and Ayushmaan Khurana room to give out pitch-perfect performances, right until the end credits. A word of advice: don’t believe in anything these, or any other characters, say.

LOVEYATRI

A not-so-academically-bright young boy, with dreams of opening a garba (a Gujarati dance) academy, falls in love with an academically-inclined Gujarati girl from the UK who is visiting his city during Navratri. They go out for six nights until the girl’s dad throws a curve ball and unhinges the poor lad. Mustering up courage, the young boy makes it to the UK, woos the girl again and they dance the garba near the London Bridge.

This entire story, by the way, is told in linear fashion in the trailer of LoveYatri — a Salman Khan production starring his brother-in-law Aayush Sharma and debutante heroine Warina Hussain.

Since this is a Salman Khan venture (and a family production to boot, with appearances by Sohail and Arbaaz Khan), LoveYatri turns out to be a tad too safe — and thankfully free from physical manifestations of romance. In fact, when the boy sees the girl for the first time everything but the girl loses colour, big wings pop out of him, and he flies up 20 feet before crashing to the ground. True love is exactly as his uncle (played by the excellent Ram Kapoor) told him.

The movie is the corporeal materialisation of a ‘G’-rated certification, so anything remotely gritty is chucked out of the window like foul-smelling garbage. There is also no real dilemma or any hint of don’t-make-me-angry type action sequences. The villainy is handled by the second best actor in the film, Ronit Roy (the first one is Kapoor).

With no unseen twists and turns, the experience becomes boring — and yet, for some reason the predictable string of scenes, a good-enough lead pair and foot-tapping garba numbers (especially the last one), keeps this one from being a total waste of one’s hard-earned cash.

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 14th, 2018