Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Movie Review: An Epic Romance Gone Tragically Wrong

The bigger tragedy than the tragedy on screen was the one off it: there were only eight people in the movie theatre

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Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Movie Review: An Epic Romance Gone Tragically Wrong
Neeraj Pandey’s first foray into  romance  is  not as awful as  what the reviews tell you. It has its  high moments: how  can it not when  you have the exceptionally  involved  Tabu and Ajay Devgan helming a love story that is  designed  as an  epic. That it fails to reach its goal is unfortunate. Nonetheless Auron Mein Kahan  Dum Tha (what an inapt title!)  is an honourable  failure, and one  that  I suspect will garner more respect as time goes by. ALSO READ: Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Trailer: Ajay Devgn-Tabu's Romantic Chemistry Blossoms In This Neeraj Pandey Film - WATCH 

 For now the  problems with the film seem glaring and insurmountable .The pacing is  uneven and  awkward , sometimes  bordering on the  selfdestructive. Edito  Praveen Kathikuloth  needed to excercize  much more discipline  and austerity.Who  signs  Devgan and Tabu to play  intense inseparable  lovers  and  then squanders precious time on a  prison drama where Devgan gets  a chance  to do what he  is loved for:  beat up the baddies , and never mind if the  screenplay is  seriously injured.

 I wonder what got into  director Neeraj Pandey to  desecrate his beautiful portrait of selfless love with so  much digression that  it hurts! It is  like investing into one  movie  experience, only to be told to  proceed to another due to  technical  reasons. Auron Mein… will be remembered  for being one of the  most selfdestructive love stories ever told in a film form. At times I thought I was watching two films in one. Then Pandey’s direction and screenplay(both in dire  need  of fumigation) would swerve back on the  right track, so that  it felt like something special from the director of Special Chabbis.

Then Neeraj Pandey would again go back to his  exasperating clunkiness hijacking the  Tabu-Devgan epic romance  into a  terribly compromised , corrupted and confounding quagmire. The worst  blow to the  film’s  retarded resonance is the casting of Shantanu Maheshwari and  Saee Manjrekar as  the younger version  of  Devgan and Tabu. Firstly, they look nothing  like the  two senior players. And even if  they did, why  cast  different actors  in the two separate spheres  in the lovers’ lives? Surely a bit of photo-shopping would have deaged  the two seasoned stalwarts  into  their younger avatar?I know  Neeraj Pandey has seen  Past Lives. Hasn’t he seen  Irish Man where Robert di Nero and Al Pacino  play younger versions of themselves?

 Not that the  younger leads are  all bad in Auron Mein... In crucial prison-meet sequence Maheshwari is commendably anguished. But  I found it hard  to believe that he and Manjrekar were  playing the same  characters that  Tabu and Devgan were.Suspension of  disbelief is fine. But  this was a fatal blunder.




The final blow to the  potential brilliancy of  a headstrong derailed story is  M. M  Keeravani’s  backround music and  songs. To say  Keeravani’s compositions are a  disappointment would not be  enough. Keeravani ruins Manoj Muntashir’s  ambrosial lyrics with vapid tunes. His background score  is ever worse.  He  over-punctuates  every sequence to the extent  of destroying the emotional impact  . This is specially truly of  a flashback sequence of violence involving  the  young Vasudha. The sequence  occurs three times in 150 minutes. Each time Keeravani hammers  the  drama with exaggerated sounds.

The undying love theme needed a song like  Tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa toh nahin. It gets  nowhere  close. The post interval section with its intersectional confab among Krishna(Devgan), Basudha(Tabu) and  her husband Abhijeet(Jimmy Sheirgil) borrows generously from the brilliant Korean film Past Lives. This is the best part of the  storytelling with the least extraneous intervention, except for someone called Meenal  repeating  interrupting the three-way conversation among the man who ruins his  life for love, the woman who lets him,and the man who marries her.

In a film plagued by inconsistency Devgan is  consistently in  character. Tabu’s face is  the map of the human heart and the one time when she has the opportunity to display her skills, she is called away  by the wretched Meenal. Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha  could have been  so much better without the  rude interruptions.I waited  patiently for Tabu and Devgan to come together  after every long and arduous  separation. I doubt  the audience would be that indulgent.

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