A very clever script keeps
the audience guessing, the suspense tingling, the murders coming and at times
it dives happily into the area of very black comedy. The film won all sorts
of awards back in 2018 and deservedly so. Once the film sets up the characters,
it turns very dark and twisty till literally the last moment which leaves
us going, huh. It is directed by Sriram Raghavan (the brilliant Ek Hasina
Thi back in 2004) and became a long-term project with multiple writers and
being shot sporadically over a period of time. He had seen the short (12-minute)
French film The Piano Tuner and took that idea of a blind piano player who
witnesses a murder and expands it to this film. I am only surprised that
Hollywood hasn't made their version because there were remakes in the Telugu,
Tamil and Malayalam Indian film industries. Though there is music, it is
well integrated into the film. I am going to keep this review to a minimum
because almost every part of it is a spoiler. So, just the basic set-up.
Akash (Ayushmann Khurrana) is a blind piano player who lives only with his
cat and practices nearly all day in hopes of winning a competition. One day
while crossing the street, he is run into by a girl on a bike. She is the
very cute Sophie (Radhika Apte) who to apologize takes him to her father's
restaurant to buy him a drink. He tells her he plays the piano. The restaurant
has one and she asks him to play. And he does. So does the actor who practiced
for months with a master to learn how to play. And play well. That is really
him playing. Anyways, the father hears the piano and comes out and offers
Akash a job playing at night for tips.
He is a huge success and he and Sophie begin to fall for one another. No
spoilers so far. Just a sweet romance. An old Bollywood actor Pramod asks
him to please come to his apartment on his anniversary to his wife and play.
Pramod is played by Anil Dhawan who in fact is a veteran actor with films
going back to the 1970s - Nagin, Zindagi - and he watches his old films -
real ones - with him in them and forces his wife to watch along. Akash shows
up at the door and his wife finally answers the door. He explains his purpose.
She lets him in and tells him her husband will be late. Very late. Because
he is dead on the floor. The film now takes off like a rocket. Akash can
actually see. He pretended to be blind to help his piano playing. The blindness
is a fake even with fake contact lenses. So, he has to sit there playing
the piano as the wife and her lover clean up the blood and stuff him in a
suitcase. Breaking his fingers to do so. It is a wonderful scene and
quite funny in its way.
That is about as far as I will go except her lover is a policeman who investigates
the missing man and they feel they have to test Akash to make sure he is
really blind. And kill him if he isn't. The wife who after seeming so sweet
and loving in an earlier scene with her husband is a total psychopath. She
is played by Tabu. She is wonderful as she meticulously cleans up loose ends.
It just goes off in crazy directions and more killings. It is a great ride.
Btw, if you wait for the end credits there is a very nifty montage of people
playing the piano in old Bollywood films.
