Anthony Burgess, in “A Clockwork Orange” said, “It’s funny how the colours of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen.” It’s in these ever golden words, the genius called “Andhadhun” basks, like a ticking bomb satched in satin cloth.
“Andhadhun” directed by Sriram Raghavan, is the story about a blind pianist who gets caught up in an adultery-murder case and thus, is pushed to the edge to save himself, through a plethora of trials and tribulations. The movie starts off with the scene where a half blind rabbit is caught feeding off a cabbage field and is gun chased across by a man, and the shot ends with the rabbit in front of a car. With this starts the story of Aakash (Aayushman Khurrana), a blind pianist who is visibly in sheer frustration as he is unable to finish a piece. He goes round the city, getting by with the help from people on the road like auto drivers, bystanders, waiters etc. Soon he encounters Sophie (Radhika Apte) who manages to book him a gig at her father’s cafe.
Running parallel to this plot is the story of Pramod Sinha (Anil Dhawan) and his wife Simi (Tabu) who are quite different from each other, but are in a happy marriage with Pramod’s obsession with his old films and Simi’s unbothering and comical indifference towards them. The two stories crossover when one evening Pramod sees Aakash at one of his gigs and invites him for a ‘private concert’ to his apartment for Simi and his anniversary. When Aakash arrives there, it starts the whirlwind thriller with Simi murdering Pramod, when caught with her lover, Manohar.
The story grows grim when Manohar is found to be the inspector of a police station where Aakash goes to lodge a complaint, and when Simi finds out that Aakash can actually see and thus, knows everything. Next, unfolds a string of mind boggling events with Simi actually blinding Aakash and Aakash almost getting killed by Manohar and his almost illegal kidney transplant by Dr. Swami, Sakhu and Murli. The story flips onto a new side like a stained bedsheet turned over to make it look new. Aakash kidnaps Simi and tries to retrieve 1 crore from her for his cornea transplant. The story concludes with Manhohar and Simi’s death and Aakash narrating this story to Sophie ‘somewhere in Eastern Europe’ after one of his gigs, where he is ‘apparently’ blind.
“Andhadhun” has been taken from the French short film “L’Accordeur” (The Piano Tuner) by Olivier Treiner. Treneir in a 2012 interview with Myfrenchfilmfestival.com said “The idea of the script was to make a film about lying.” He went on to say that he aimed at making his character very Hitchcockian like North by Northwest. Sriram Raghavan’s conceptual binding of the original short film coupled with his own artistic aspiration is transparent through “Andhadhun”. When few minutes into the movie Aakash is revealed to not be blind is how Raghavan plays with the audience’s idea of a climax. So much so that the expected high tide of the film where Simi commits the murder, is also marred by the casual disposition of the director towards the revelation Aakash’s secret.
Interestingly, Pramod’s death marks the birth of the ever rising action throughout the film, which keeps the audience on the edge. The climax reaches when Aakash kicks the empty can from the path by his stick. This, can be interpreted as, just like Aakash kicks the empty can and carries on, he has sweeped whoever has tried to deter his path, in the past like Simi, Manohar, Murli, Dr. Swami and Sakhu, as if he wasn’t blind and could actually see and comprehend everything. Probably this is why many believe that Aakash wasn’t blind after all even after Simi’s attempt. Probably, all these were a part of his musical piece that he couldn’t solve and his impairment ultimately aided him to end it.
The play of colours in it are winning and for the critics to take note of. Aakash’s house is primarily yellow in shade. Yellow stands for happiness and joy, but it also implies deceit which is signified by the presence of Aakash’s cat. Simi’s house is primarily in blue that stands for trust and loyalty which is in disparity with Simi’s actions. Thus, it can be said that the characters’ modus operandi of homicide and lying about impairments portray how the characters are in foil. Also, the colour red has a striking significance: the spilled blood in Simi’s apartment and the red sofa in Aakash’s apartment seem to transpire their foiled nature. The red colour of Simi’s car in which both Aakash and Simi ride, shows that in their different deception they are actually very similar.
From Aakash’s experiment, what I have deduced is that he not only intended to explore what art gives to the disabled and impaired, but also how the disabled can bestow in art; purely symbiotic. The rabbit chase in the beginning symbolises the road undertaken by Aakash in “Aandhdhun” – which brings us to the next inference that both the rabbit and Aakash are mammals with disputed impairments escaping to live.
All in all, “Andhadhun” is an unbelievable artistic piece, because I refuse to call it cinema lest it becomes insulting. The madlad of a director Sriram Raghavan not only served us, but he has also set a yardstick and an example of fine directing and adapted screenplay. Aayushman Khurrana and Tabu were absolute treat to watch and feel. They became our aesthetic experience, exquisitely driving the audience with the narrative. The film at one point gets a little confusing to keep up which immediately reminded me of Raghavan’s “Agent Vinod” which had a similar discrepancy. Raghavan has undoubtedly grown as director since then, especially with Nolan-like tendencies of maiming your psyche and bringing it back only to fire it up with a branched finale.
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