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'Andhadhun' (2018) is, at face value, a thriller and a mystery centred around a yesteryear film actor who can't seem to get enough of his glamour days, a seductive bored housewife and a pianist who may or may not be blind. However, what the film is NOT at face value, is far more interesting.
At one level, the film is about seeing, the ways in which we see, what we choose to see, and how we choose to see them. In a film where a blind man is the fulcrum, this is deliciously ironic. Contact lenses, masks (both real and figurative) mirrors, cameras, images, videos, perspectives of other people (a cartoonist sketching is memorable), animals (a cat and a rabbit) and even objects (evil eye chains, posters of film actresses winking) populate this world. Eyes are everywhere, and yet, it seems, things are never as they appear at first glance. This is a world in which doctors may not be benevolent, cops can be cowards, meek women are ruthless killers, sensitive musicians can be con artists, poor people can be as soulless as the rich and even kids can be evil. No one is spared.
At another level, the film is about the fictions we weave and the parts we play, the little lies we tell both ourselves and others about who we are. Many an iconic story is referenced in the film ('Qatl', 'L'Accordeur', 'Macbeth', 'Tirez sur le Pianiste', 'CID', Agatha Christie, Blind Man's Buff and even Charlie Chaplin). Instead of merely creating a pastiche, the material pays homage to the old and rises above it to create something startlingly new, springing twist upon twist on its viewers. This is a feat of writing beyond my imagination, because it manages to break the myth of the omniscient narrator -- the makers are saying look, we're showing you everything, and yet, in the ultimate twist, even the camera doesn't see it all, cannot tell the whole story. The sum is greater than the parts.
The cast (Tabu, Ayushman Khurrana, Radhika Apte, Ashwini Kalsekar, Zakir Hussain, Anil Dhawan and Manav Vij) is uniformly terrific. The details in the writing and design are noteworthy: an old film poster sits next to a youtube video, a roaring tiger turns into a cowering mouse, a great wave towers above Vivaldi's overtures, a real rabbit turns into wood and a Buddha statue sits by a gun.
Ultimately the message is straightforward: we live in a world that has been endlessly corrupted by money and power -- nothing is beyond sale and everything, including a fake (or real?) video can be bought for a small bribe. Director and writer Sriram Raghavan keeps the undertones subtle: an offhand line about fake news drives the point home that we've been lying to each other long before the press and social media came into our lives.
In the end, there may or may not be one eye above us all watching and waiting to have the last word. Until then, the joke's on all of us: in life's great mystery, we are all just blind witnesses.
Genre: Crime, Drama, Music, Comedy
Language: Hindi
Runtime: 2h 19min
Year of release: 2018
Streaming platform: Netflix
Hot take is a series in which I offer my first impressions of films from India and around the world.
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