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Friday, February 7, 2025
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BOLLYWOOD AASHAYEIN
EDITOR'S PICK
Rating: *** ½
This is a film about coping with dying. But that`s not what makes it such a
special experience. It`s the writer-director`s profound understanding of human
nature that furnishes the simple story with a lucidity and coherence even when
the protagonist`s mind is so numbed by physical pain he can barely think
straight.
"Aashayein" is structured as a journey from a bright delusory light
into a place where the radiance comes from a consciousness of why mortality is
not to be feared.
In John Abraham`s eyes are mapped the entire history of the human heart, its
follies and foibles as it struggles to make coherent the indecipherable
logistics that define our journey across that bridge which everyone crosses from
this world to the next.
As that very fine actress Prateeksha Lonkar (a Kukunoor favourite) says,
"The only difference between the healthy and the ill is that the former
don`t know when they are dying and the latter do."
Between that state of blissful oblivion where we all think life is forever (and
a day) and that one moment when our delusions come crashing down, there resides
some very fine cinema. Hrishikesh Mukherjee`s "Anand" where Rajesh
Khanna smiled his way through that wobbly bridge taking us to the next world, is
an interesting reference point in "Aashayein".
I also thought of the actress Supriya Choudhary shouting into the dispassionate
mists in the mountains, "I want to live". The echoes reverberate all
the way to Kukunoor`s heartwarming, funny and elegiac exposition on the truth
that lies on the other side of that illusory mountain we call life. Kukunoor
pays a homage to life per se, and life as we know in the movies about death.
Even in the most poignant places in the art Kukunoor ferrets out some humour.
When John`s lovely girlfriend (Sonal Sehgal) hunts him down in his exilic place
of the dying, John quips, "So you are not going to behave like one of those
heroines in films who dumps the dying hero?"
The fantasy element creeps into the hospice (yes, that`s the spotless space that
the story inhabits unostentatiously) with the least amount of fuss. There`s a
little boy (the bright and expressive Ashwin Chitale) who weaves mystical tales
borrowed from the comic books for the desperate and the dying. Here Kukunoor
brings in an element of rakish adventure borrowed from the edgy hijinks of
Indiana Jones.
Who says money can`t buy love? John uses bundles of cash to bring a smile to
these doomed lives. When he doubles up with pain in womb-like postures of
helplessness we feel his pain.
John in Harrison Ford`s hat and whip cuts a starry figure. He has never been
more fetchingly photographed. John`s smile reaches his eyes, makes its way to
his heart and then to ours. This film opens new doors in John`s histrionic
abilities. It`s a performance that heals and nurtures.
John`s finest moments are reserved for a hot-tempered sharp-tongued 17-year-old
girl on a wheelchair, played with intuitive warmth by Anaitha Nayar. He guides
the relationship between these two unlikely comrades of unwellness with
brilliant restrain and candour. She wants him to make love. He does with his
eyes using his unshed tears as lyrical lubricant.
Here is a performance that defines the character through immense measures of
unspoken anguish. Rajesh Khanna in "Anand"? Nope. John pitches his
performance at a more wry and cynical world where true feelings are often
smothered in worldly sprints across a wounded civilization.
This is unarguably Kukunoor`s most sensitive and moving work since "Iqbal".
We often find little sobs pounding at the base of our stomachs. Not all the
characters or situations are fully formed and fructified. But even the
partly-realized truths in "Aashayein" convey more common sense and
uncommon affection for life than the "entertainers" of today`s cinema
where laughter is generated through cracks in places very far removed from the
heart.
This one takes us straight to the heart.
Aashayein is a story of a compulsive gambler who discovers new meanings of fortune and life through a dramatic turn of events.
Aashayein is a tale of Rahul`s journey from darkness to light. A journey about love, hate, life, death and above all hope.
