Friday 1 July 2011

7 Khoon Maaf - 7 murders forgiven

2011 by Vishal Bhardwaj

Ever since India entered the globalisation era, Bollywood was one of the first Indian industrial sector who thought they could match with the world and prove they are part of a Super power nation. Sadly Bollywood  considered Hollywood as their blue print. And ever since Lagaan got nominated as one of the five entries for the foreign language movie at the Oscars, Bollywood has decided for sure that recognition by Hollywood is the ultimate test. Nothing wrong in vying for recognition. But the path they chose is to make similar movies like that of Hollywood. And they started doing this in its whole, movies which look alike to the ones from LA, not just in content, style (not just on how movie is shot and told, but even how their actors behaved and conducted themselves in front or behind the camera) or production but even adopted their promotion techniques. In between they ignored the fact that Lagaan as a movie had India written all over it. 90% of Bollywood movies, ever since, are just trying to look like Hollywood movies. 7 Khoon Maaf, is yet another movie which is a poor attempt to make a western style movie.

Susanna is searching for her love. She marries 7 times and ends up killing all of them, as each one of them were simply the wrong guy. And she escapes law each time too and finally chose spirituality. 

I dont know from where they got this plot. I, for one, found even that plot having a western touch. So right from the basics, I think it turns out to be a highly pretentious movie, that I can only feel sorry for Vishal Bharadwaj, who had made a much better movie in Kaminey. There might not be even one ordinary Indian who could identify with Susanna as a character. So flawed are Indian concepts on love and marriage.

The movie is narrated by a forensic doctor, who was bought up by Susanna, but the narration, even, is really poor and bohring. And dont worry about any logics here, as to how Susanna escapes the law at all. For, from the second or third, she starts pulling strings with the police officer in charge of the investigation, who himselves ends up as a later husband. Life with the first two husbands are detailed slightly, yes very lightly, and by the end of the first half, I was quite scared about watching through the rest 3 or 4.. Had it been only 2 or 3 husbands, and their life before and after was detailed more, may be, may be this movie would have been better. But it ends up as a really horrible watch. Imagine what will happen if a 100 meter sprinter is asked to run for 800 or 1500 meters race. The poor athlete will definitely complete the race, but he would drag it all along after the 400 or 500 meters.

The director and script writer really wanted to make it a special movie it seems. So they tried to make it look different in many ways from the rest. But, not even Susanna manages to touch our hearts. She doesnt even get any closer. However, there were still some brilliant moments. The Darling song was quite nice. So was the final dance sequence of Susanna when she becomes a nun. May be this would have been a better TV serial.

A real pretentious movie, which fails as such.