Why Hamari Adhuri Kahaani felt incomplete to me
Watching a Vidya Balan movie in cinema is not my idea of a fun evening, but it comes with one assurance: If Balan is the protagonist the movie would be something to remember. That idea remained adhura (incomplete), as wishful thinking while I did my best to like her latest release: Hamari Adhuri Kahaani (HAK). And yes, I failed. The movie is so weak that it doesn't merely feel adhuri it makes you feel like throwing your half-empty popcorn box on the screen. In exasperation. If only there weren't many rows between you and the screen…
Mahesh Bhatt's production, Mohit Suri's direction, and the brilliant cast of that powerhouse of talent, National Award winner, Vidya Balan, along with the serial kisser and a perfectly dependable actor in a small movie with big emotions, Emraan Hashmi, and the underrated but a fabulous actor, another National Award winner, Rajkummar Rao could not make the kahaani (story) that was adhuri work on the big screen. The reasons are myriad and painfully simple even while you are being tortured to see a story that falls into an abyss of nothing in every new scene. Intensity and pathos of an impossible love are emotions that form the palette of many a Bhatt movie, from Arth to Aashiqui 2, but watching HAK with its ouch-worthy dialogues, all I could think and say out loud to my equally dismayed-at-the-movie cousin seated next to me that at times silence speaks louder than words. The dialogues are so melodramatic, so unoriginal, so out-of-place that I felt totally distanced from the people in pain on the screen. If I may confess, I get teary-eyed even in animation movies when the emotion is of love, and the pain is that of distance. In HAK, the characters of Balan and Hashmi seem clichéd despite the profundity of the story.
A big chunk of the story is set in flashback, two decades back, but what's shown: present-day India and the UAE. Why o why? Why add the flashback when you are too lazy or too stingy to create the era in which the protagonists faced heartache, humiliation, and heartbreak?
A story that could have been heart-warming ends up annoying you, and that's the worst thing a movie can do to you or me. The saving grace of HAK is its gorgeous music, truly in the tradition of music of most of Bhatt productions, be they magnificent, plagiarised, sleazy, horror or just duds. Hamari Adhuri Kahaani by that singer with a voice that you fall in love with each new song he sings: Arijit Singh. When he sings of hearts that break and love that kills you slowly, the memory of that one love that echoes in your heartbeats comes as alive as the colours of the sky on the giant screen in front of you. As the theatre goes unusually silent, you feel your heart breaking once again as each word of the song is evocative of the agony you suffer when you think of that one love that was heartbreakingly beautiful, that completed you, but remained adhura.
The most effective scene in the movie is the one in which Hashmi walks through the field of arum lily, inhaling fragrance of that indescribably beautiful flower that reminds him of the woman he loves more than life. Literally. Rao is very impressive in his enactment of a lover gone rogue, as his emotions are manifested in a starkly palpable way that makes him human and fallible. Balan is brilliant but looks out of place in a romantic setting with a hero who looks younger than her.
Despite its apparent faults, HAK could have touched a chord with the audience if the screenplay had any substance to speak of. There's not a moment when you relate to Balan as a suffering, dedicated mother; the scenes with her child are stilted and forced. When you watch her with the man she loves, there's nothing that makes you believe that their love is beyond everything, that it's forever. While in an unforgettable movie like The Bridges of Madison County, the four days the protagonists spend together are so simply yet so powerfully written and enacted that no word is needed to reiterate that their love is eternal, HAK is the story about love that is once in a lifetime, yet the presentation is so weak there's not much to be empathised with, or feel any pain for. True love does not need melodrama; it's revealed through silent eyes. True love does not require huge gestures; it's expressed with the touch of a hand, the caress of a mouth, the unhurried motion of bodies. True love does not depend on emotional words; it nourishes on the acts that take place wordlessly. HAK is all about love, yet it fails to make an impact on your heart.
Hamari Adhuri Kahaani is one of those movies that everyone wants to see yet no one goes back to watch again. That is the biggest thing you give to a movie as a cine-goer, and when a movie fails to elicit that reaction the filmmaker must ponder: what is it that left this story adhuri…?