Media Magick

After making a film (Kapoor and Sons) that talked about a dysfunctional family, highlighted the sexual orientation and preferences of individuals, and how small things lead to some drastic outcomes, Shakun Batra has come up with his latest movie Gehraiyaan. The film features actors like Naseer Uddin Shah, Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday, Rajat Kapoor, and Dhairya Karwa. The film is available on Amazon Prime and is 150 minutes long.

The story of Gehraiyaan revolves around Tia (Ananya) and Alisha (Deepika) who are cousins with a complex past. Alisha is dating Karan (Dhairya) and Tia is planning to get married to Zain (Siddhant). They all meet up and sanity starts to slip away from Zain’s and Alisha’s hands. Casual flirting leads to hot one-night stands that result in changing the lives of every person upside down. The story not just talks about infidelity but also highlights past experiences that impact the future and entire lives of individuals. After all, Shakun Batra knows how to handle complicated personalities and offers them as glorious winners in life on the silver screen.

Trailer: Gehraiyaan

Gehraiyaan is loaded with good performances and Naseeruddin Shah with barely a few scenes impresses effortlessly. There are scenes where he isn’t saying anything but his expressions and mannerism will make you clap for him. Deepika Padukone leads the show and carries intense scenes on her strong shoulders. Her emotional outbursts and petrifying scenes are brilliantly done. Siddhant Chaturvedi beautifully portrays his character and gives an earnest performance. Rajat Kapoor is fantastic in post-interval.

Unfortunately, the characters of Ananya Panday and Dhairya Karwa are poorly conceived and don’t offer the scope to shine in their respective roles.

The script of Gehraiyaan is weak overall. There are some good moments here and there but in a 2 hour 30 minutes film, there should be more meat. The backstories of multiple characters are neglected and the entire emphasis is on Deepika’s character.

Gehraiyaan reminds me of the 90s and 2000s b-rated late-night films that follow similar storylines where one of the spouses explores the possibility of infidelity and what happens next is a series of flings that lead to a marathon of screw-ups. Yes, there are some deep scenes but they are farfetched and don’t make an impact as they should have.

I am not going to dive into the depth of glorifying live-ins and infidelity in Progressive India and making it look so appealing, but I will like to draw attention to the treatment. The film has practically every kind of element from romance to infidelity, friendship to malice, and business deals to plotting murders, just like Hollywood’s b-rated films used to be but here the soul is missing.

Gehraiyaan (which means depth) misses the depths on various accounts ranging from character development to storytelling and execution.