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Friday, January 24, 2025
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BOLLYWOOD 7 KHOON MAAF
EDITOR'S PICK
Rating: ****
Chalk up an absolute winner for the Vishal Bhardwaj-Priyanka
Chopra team. They make a coherent vision out of an inconceivable marital crises.
How do you make sense of a woman who`s an incorrigible potentially-loathsome
serial spouse-killer who when challenged about her weird passion for changing
husbands by divine decree rather than the law of the land, turns around and
says, This heart of mine, it`s to blame. Wicked laughter follows.
And dammit, we are amused!
How does one make head or `tale` of such a woman? Well, the first thing a
director with a canny sense and sensibility does is sign Priyanka Chopra to play
the wretchedly unfulfilled, genetically incomplete woman, a living, throbbing
warning against the institution of marriage!
Priyanka, not for the first time, proves she is leagues ahead of all
competition. She approaches this strange and sensual creature of the night from
the outside and then quietly makes inroads into the woman`s heart and soul. We
can actually see the character`s snarled inner-world on Priyanka`s face! We
don`t even know when and how she does it. Priyanka is that kind of a player.
Vishal Bharadwaj has earlier made films about gangs and gangsterism. Every time
the dark brooding atmospheric surface seemed to suggest a life of sinister
suppressions. Those unspoken, intangible thoughts and visions that often guide a
human being to his or her doom are outlined in 7 Khoon Maaf with
supreme poetic elegance.
This is Bhardwaj`s most fluidly-narrated film to date. Of course, having Gulzar
on board helps. He pens Urdu poetry for Irrfan Khan and rock poetry for John
Abraham. For Priyanka poetry is not needed. She creates a kind of indecipherable
poetic statement for her deeply dysfunctional character who kills 6 husbands and
moves to the 7th at the end of the film with the profound satirical grief of a
woman who has discovered that this world has no true love to offer her.
True love...ah! Now that`s an idea. At heart Vishal`s dark elegiac film is about
the search for true love. The relationship that Sussanna (Priyanka) forms with a
young boy(Vivaan Shah) as she goes from one husband to another remains at the
core of the film. In a macabre subversion of the almost-pure love that Susanna
shares with Vivaan`s character, at one point in the narration she tries to
seduce the boy who`s almost like a son. It`s a dark ugly moment, almost
repugnant in its incestuous resonances but in keeping with the character`s
insatiable appetite for destruction.
Vishal Bhardwaj brings to the storyboard a deep sense of tragic grandeur even as
Susanna slips from self-gratification to delusional spirituality.
Priyanka Chopra has already proved herself way ahead of her contemporaries in
her earlier works notably Fashion and What`s Your Raashee.
In 7 Khoon Maaf she moves to another level, displaying a range of
emotions and age-changes (minus prosthetics) that one last saw in Shabana Azmi`s
performances.
Priyanka`s sequences with Irrfan Khan (playing a gentle poet who transforms into
a sexual pervert in bed) are stuff poetic nightmares are made of. We can clearly
see the cinematographer (Ranjan Palit) is not in love with the actress, but the
character. His camera searches for intransigent images in Susanna`s life, even
as Priyanka`s quest for the character`s core takes her into areas of
self-expression that are far beyond the reach of cinema acting as we know it.
A. Sreekar Prasad edits the life of Susanna with a surety that, alas,the
character never comes close to achieving in her dealings with the opposite sex.
Sreekar creates a symphonic seamless movement from one husband to another,
sometimes joining segments in Susanna`s life with visuals that would otherwise
seem incompatible.
The husbands are all played by actors who have no qualms in stripping away their
vanity to become the kind of suave but duplicitous untrustworthy spouses who
cheat and betray for the sake of the opposite emotion to love. Irrfan Khan as a
wolf in poet`s clothing, Naseeruddin Shah as the affable old Bengali dietician
(his Bengali accent is more dead-on than any true-blue Bengalis) and John
Abraham as a stereotypical rock musician gone to poppy-seed, are pitch-perfect
in their creating a drama of the callous for Priyanka`s character.
But it`s Neil Nitin Mukesh as her first legless army-man husband whose display
of clenched menace jolts you.
As a storyteller Vishal Bhardwaj has never been more in command of his language.
He punctuates Susanna`s story with bouts of unexpected humour and poetry.
Providentially the murders are committed in ways that appear more humorous than
savage. And that`s both a good and a bad thing.
The narrative shows a rare understanding of the gender dynamics and the sexual
tensions between men and women. Priyanka Chopra`s interaction with the unctuous
and closet-horny police officer Anu Kapoor delectably illustrates the fable of
the Temptress & The Besotted. And by the way Viagara never seemed funnier.
Priyanka Chopra goes from husband-to-husband with a mocking sigh of resigned
surrender. She is not a victim. But neither is she the hero of the bizarre web
of destruction and delusion that her character weaves around her.
Actor Neil Nitin Mukesh and his wife Rukmini Sahay are all set to welcome their first child.Neil took to Instagram to announce that they are going to become parents soon."Now we will be three," Neil captioned a colourful photograph in which a stork is seen carrying a baby.Neil married Mumbai-based Rukmini in February 2017. The couple got engaged on the auspicious occasion of Dussehra.Read More
Realism in cinema transformed from proletariat to bourgeoisie: Vivaan ShahActor Vivaan Shah, who has grown up watching a lot of realistic cinema featuring his father Naseeruddin Shah, says the signature of Indian cinema is its emotion and drama, but the projection of realism has changed from the working class to the bourgeoisie.Read More
`7 Khoon Maaf` - Bharadwaj ready with black comedy (IANS Movie Preview)
Vishal Bharadwaj`s fetish for big screen adaptations of books and plays is well-known. Continuing with what he is best at, the multi-faceted filmmaker is bringing on screen Friday Susanne`s Seven Husbands, which has Priyanka Chopra as a sinister woman who knocks off her husbands one after another.
The film is based on Ruskin Bond`s Susanne`s Seven
Husbands and tracks the story of a beautiful young girl Susanna Anna-Marie
Johannes (Priyanka) who ends up tying the knot seven times following untimely
and mysterious deaths of her hapless husbands.
And due to strange circumstances, Susanna becomes the prime suspect.
Produced by UTV Spotboy and Bharadwaj himself, it stars Neil Nitin Mukesh, John
Abraham, Irrfan Khan, Naseeruddin Shah, Annu Kapoor and Russian actor Aleksandr
Dyachenko. Naseer`s son Vivaan also plays one of the husbands in the thriller.
In the film, Priyanka`s character ages from 20 years to 65. The first story
titled Adamkhor Major has Neil playing the role of Major Edwin
Rodrigues. Susanna falls for him as he looks dashing in uniform; he`s however a
bit old for her and likes to give orders.
Good looking guys are Susanna`s weakness.
Post-Edwin`s death, Susanna decides to marry Jimmy, played by John, as she is
floored by his good looks and musical talent. She, however, doesn`t have any
idea what`s in store for her. This story is called Ek Duje Ke Liye.
But Jimmy also dies and then enters poet Wasiullah Khan a.k.a. Musafir played by
Irrfan. Impressed by his poetry, Susanna marries him too. Although during the
day he is gentle, as the dark dawns upon, he becomes something else. This story
is called Mussafir Hoon Yaaron.
Amar Prem sees Susanna falling for Nicolai Vronsky, played by
Russian actor Aleksandr Dyachenko, from Moscow but this marriage doesn`t last
long as Vronsky dies too.
Following the death of Susanna`s previous husbands, the police start taking keen
interest in the case. So police officer Keemat Lal enters Susanna`s life. He not
only persuades her to marry him but also makes it impossible for her to say no.
Their story is titled Pyaar Ki Keemat.
After the death of Keemat, Susanna is attracted to Dr. Modhusudon Tarafdar.
Titled Mashroom Da, as the story progresses Susanne is now suffering
from melancholy and her husband Naseer puts her on mushroom only diet.
The seventh husband is played by Vivaan, but the story has been kept under
wraps.
For her role, Priyanka had to go through seven different age makeovers, for
which prosthetics had to play a vital part.
Bharadwaj had hired Hollywood special make-up effects artist Greg Cannom of
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button fame to create those seven
different looks.
It is also being said that to make Priyanka look like a 65-year-old woman, the
make-up team used Priyanka`s grandmother`s photo for ideas.
Like always, Bharadwaj has also composed the music for the film. The Indian
version of traditional Russian folk song Kalinka,
Darling instantly struck a chord with the music buffs. It has been
sung by Bharadwaj`s wife Rekha and Usha Uthup.
