Andha-dhun : Dark Comedy at it’s Best

Watching a movie twice in a theatre is the ultimate endorsement of a movie, and Adha-dhun compelled me to do so, for a simple reason – due to the modern invention of ‘the mobile phone’, my viewing of the piano-dead-body scene was highly interrupted. The scene is probably an iconic scene, in due time it could reach the same heights as the dead-body in Mahabharata scene from Jane Bhi Do Yaroon.

Lesson learnt, in second viewing came the ‘airplane’ mode.

In story writing, the technocrats talk about structure, premise – conflict – resolution, and the piano-dead-body scene is a textbook illustration of how to take a turn in the this structure. Movie changes dynamics from that point on, in terms of pace, in terms of narrative, in terms of characters. Dark comedy as a genre is fascinating when well executed, it brings out a certain dissociation within you, what is essentially bad and tragic and is yet enjoyable. The dichotomy is surprisingly not disturbing!

The other great thing about the movie is that it is shot in Pune. A correction here, this is not the other great thing, this ‘the great’ thing about the movie, the story, acting, direction are good, yet then pale in comparison to this great aspect about the movie. USA might claim the distinction of ‘the greatest country’ in the world, however when it comes to cities, Pune is simply great, mind you no superlatives, great, greater, greatest, it’s just ‘great’ subsuming all superlatives that there can possibly be. Also what Puneites feel about Pune can be expressed however what we Punekar’s feel about Pune, no word in any dictionary of any language in the world. Here I would like to warn also those people taking selfies in front of the ‘Love Pune’ in front of Amanora Mall, I want to warn to you, do not put those pics on social media, it is a domicile test in disguise, all of you might fall victims to the next natural birth citizens rights movement. No true Punekar will ever click a photo of / infront of that sign. ‘Love’ is too small a word to express what we feel about our city!

Anyways, watching your city, the places you are familiar with ‘On Screen’, brings out a curious emotions within you. I watched the marathi movie ‘shwas’ at least five times when I was in USA for my master’s, just because it had scenes from Pune. The favorite part was to identify the places shown, speculating on even the tiny roadside hotel where they have tea for about 5 seconds. I mean it had the ‘great’ Abasaheb Garware College in the background and still I had not had tea there, How is this even possible! And talking about background, Andha-Dhun is a notch better, it features a shot of the house where I live, agreed it’s in the background, but in that moment, for me, it was vivid, actually I don’t even remember what was happening in the foreground!

Back to the movie (because talking about Pune is an endless endeavor), it’s well written, very tight to it’s premise, characters are very true. Simple villains stay simple, complex villains stay complex, all confirm the central thesis of Dr House, nothing changes, nothing changes even if you have faced near death and come back, nothing changes. The characters follow the doctrine to the tee, even death seems timid to the selfishness within the characters.

Ayushman Khurana has acquired a knack of doing off beat roles, with path breaking premises, however off late this approach had started to feel a tad bore as these films seemed too overwhelmed by the strength of the premise and they never cross beyond that. His latest ‘Badhaai Ho’ is an apt example, the storyline, the premise, the central theme, the trailer, the movie, all are same. The trailer is the movie and the movie is the trailer. I call them ‘the waterboy’ movies. Adam Sandler’s ‘Waterboy’ is the first time I experienced this phenomenon. The trailer had one joke, and the entire movie was just a big wait for the repeat telecast of that one joke, if you are thinking that the movie provides context to that great joke, then remember, the only ‘great’ thing in the world is Pune, and the joke is a standalone joke, it is the kind stand up comics use typically to start their show, or better, the kind of joke that a stand up comic host uses as a Segway to the introduction of the main comic performance.

Thankfully Andha-Dhun breaks this mould as there is much more to the movie than just an interesting premise.

Firstly it exposes the idiosyncrasies of ‘becoming creative’. Akash is an aspiring composer, in his bid to create an USP for himself, he adds ‘blindness’ to his skill set. Ya, he skillfully pretends to be blind. I mean an ok-ok pianist elevates himself to Beethoven status by adding vision impairment to his tune. His deceit is comical, harmless for the first fifteen minutes of the movie. This is where you need to appreciate the writer in normalizing a deceitful character. The character shows all shades of bad, deceit is just the beginning, next is timidity when he unable to report a murder in fear of blowing his cover, then literally he signs up with the devil, a black market organ doctor, and the whole thing is encapsulated at the end with selfishness in maintaining his cover. The character covers all the seven sins as if he is following a checklist and yet the audience feel endearment towards him. This is the dichotomy which is more fascinating than the film itself, it’s a treatise in human psychology. What’s going on for him, is surrounding characters who are darker, for example if Akash is being untruthful with his girlfriend, we get Simi who is cheating in her marriage, subconsciously deceit in marriage is more graver than deceit in a relationship which does not have the stamping of marriage. It’s so culturally ingrained, A Divorcee in matrimonial match making  is a level lower than a person who might have had 2-3 multiple affairs before marriage. The idea of Akash is thus fascinating, he is the only one in the movie who ticks all the ‘sins’, the rest of the characters tick one or two on the list, yet Akash gets justified.

So watch the movie, enjoy the movie, see people around you enjoying the movie, and then get stumped upon reflection that you were enjoying misery, and then marvel in the concept of ‘dark humor’