Let me preface this by saying that there is no one who is a more adoring fan of Shakun Batra’s first two films than me. I even listed Ekk Main Aurr Ekk Tu as the best film of the 2010s. Its follow-up, Kapoor & Sons, wasn’t as cohesive a cinematic experience but it still broke new ground. It was still a great Masala film.
Then I had the misfortune of watching Searching For Sheela and I immediately began questioning Batra’s talent, and my taste frankly. The propaganda film was as frivolous and vapid as a Dr. Phil Kardashians special but nowhere near as fun.
Still, I was excited about Gehraiyaan. After all it was Batra’s return to fiction, to romance, to mining emotions.
Much to my chagrin, it turned out to be as soul-crushing an experience as Searching For Sheela. Barring the film’s gorgeous mise-en-scène which makes the film look like a two-hour Dolce & Gabbana perfume ad (not a bad thing by any means), Gehraiyaan is a car crash.
“For the sake of cinema, the relationship between Shakun Batra and Karan Johar must be severed.”
Batra’s main problem is that he’s a Dharma Productions employee, and try as hard as he might, he’s just not Dharma material. Someone who is clearly inspired by Woody Allen, Zac Braff – and in Gehraiyaan‘s case, Michael Antonioni – is the polar opposite of the pedestrian schlock that Dharma holds sacrosanct.
That’s why Gehraiyaan is such a godawful film. It starts off as a modern-day L’Eclisse, Antonioni’s dreamy 1962 arthouse film about excruciatingly beautiful men and women facing existential crises, but then veers unexpectedly and forcefully into Indian soap territory.
This jarring shift in tone was Dharma’s doing, I’m sure.
Batra’s more successful last film, Kapoor & Sons, faced the exact same problem. It was Garden State in its first two acts and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham in its third. Audiences and critics (myslef included) were willing to overlook that however because the film had so much more to offer.
Save for the fact that Gehraiyaan might hold the Guinness World record for number of times a film drops the F bomb, the film has bubkis to offer.
It’s clear that Batra is dying to make something substantial but can’t because, if he does, Dharma Productions could find him guilty of dereliction of duty.
Watch L’Eclisse instead.
