The Past - A thought provoking, whirlwind of complex emotions

It’s a movie that haunts. It is an unsettling drama that claims you and there is no way you can get done with it. The more you try to make peace with it the more it lurks. Yes, that’s the effect this movie will have on you.  If you are looking for answers, watch out!! All that this movie has to offer is questions and that’s where its beauty lies.

It chokes and makes you see the grey in life; it brings you face to face with characters that are essentially good. It’s a story about three people who are failed by their good intentions.

Failed marriage, illicit relationship, parenting, hidden motives and the desperate need to seek happiness is the edifice on which Ashgar Farhidi models The Past. It’s not at all strange to see how each character in the movie is linked with the other and how difficult it’s for them to break the ties that are already broken. Each character has their own story and reasons and each one of them is noble in their depravity.

Movie opens with Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) the estranged husband to Marie who heads back to Paris to settle his past. Marie (Bérénice Bejo) survivor of two failed marriages and a mother of two daughters, she yearns for a divorce to get settled with her new boyfriend and then there is Samir (Tahar Rahim) Marie’s boyfriend.

Of all the three, Samir is the one whose life is fucked the most. Left with a son and a comatose wife, he has the ugly reality of his wife’s fouled up suicide attempt to deal with.

 Ahmad comes to Paris in the search for closure. His desire to get divorced with Marie and end everything on a happy note is thwarted when he is dragged in Marie’s present life. There is an unfinished business between the two. Ahmad left Marie 4 years ago and has to pay off by dealing with her boyfriend’s son (Faud) and council her elder daughter (Lucie) to accommodate Samir in their life. Lucie like every other daughter wants her mother to be happy. She is tired of her mother’s fleeting romances and is unable to understand why men in her mother’s life don’t stay. Lucie has a secret that alters her mother’s chances of happiness and it’s her secret that shifts the story and leads us to the end.

But, like I said, Ashagar Faridi doesn’t offer you any answers. The way he twists the truth in each character’s hand and how it leads to the wrong beginnings is an act of marvel. Ashgar Faridi doesn’t corrupt the movie with grandiose instead he keeps it real without any music and minimum props. He makes his characters speak more with the expressions and less with dialogues. Every frame in which Bérénice Bejo is caught up with speaks volumes. Her bottled up frustration, helplessness and her anger is witnessed in her expressions. He does an excellent job in making us stay with her in witnessing her wretchedness. The scene where she waits on the road and asks Lucie to come back home will make you one with her emotions. He is a ruthless director who makes us witness intense suffering and the only antidote he offers is that he makes it easy for us to empathize with the characters.

He throws these hints at the reader and asks the audience to form a reality with it. He lets us gauge the relationship between Marie and Ahmad when she spits bitterness towards Ahmad, “When you play the good guy and try to teach us something, I really hate you.”

We know Marie isn’t able to let go of Ahmad when Lucie breaks it to Ahmad, “Do you know why she fell in love with that jerk? Because he looked like you”. We know Faud doesn’t hate Marie when he asks Samir why he can’t stay at Marie’s place.

 We know as much as Samir despises his wife for committing suicide and jeopardizing his life, he isn’t thoughtlessly selfish and does care for her when he asks her, “Squeeze my hand if you feel anything, Celine”. The closing shot is one of the best shot scenes and reveals a lot about the dilemma and human emotions.

The past neither instructs nor delights instead it blurs the line where it is difficult to separate the past from the present. A thought-provoking, whirlwind of complex emotions, it’s a saga of uncertainty and failed attempts to seek happiness.

Jaoon Kahan Bata Ae Dil is truly Love Fucked

Love-fucked is the English title of the movie Jaoon Kahan Bata ae Dil. It's an apt title, however, 'Perils of being in a relationship with a douche-bag' would have been nice too. A crime patrol episode on toxic relationship had disturbed me enough and while discussing it with a friend he suggested me to watch Jaoon Kahan. He said 'watch it, it still has some hope'.

The way the movie begins, where you see Khushboo Upadhyay checking her hair and gajra, rushing to meet her boyfriend on the bus reminded me of Mumbai as depicted in late 70s Bollywood romance like Rajnigandha and Choti si baat.  Jaaon Kahan is the polar opposite of those Amol Palekar and Vidhya Sinha movies. It is an ugly spectacle of sick, toxic relationship. The first scene between Khushboo Upadhyay and Ajit kokate sets the tone of the movie.

The way he tells her that he will decide when he needs to get angry on her suggests it's an unequal relationship. The way he talks to her it feels like he is a shitload of negativity. Nihilism and narcissism combined with a dash of arrogance is this guy (Khushboo Upadhyay's) 'Jaan' in the movie. A pseudo intellectual who seems to have progressive views but his actions are rotten and filled with misogyny. Someone should give all the awards to Ajit Kokate for portraying this character with utmost ruthlessness that makes one want to despise him with all the might. 

The interesting part of the movie is that the couple rarely address each other with their names. He calls her pagli and she calls him jaan and the only name that gets spoken about is of Sunita, Khushboo's roomie.   

Aadish Keluskar chooses the right setting, the long walk on the Marine drive and scorching heat that intensifies the mercurial aspect of the couple's relationship and Ajit Kokate's views on life, politics, marriage, infidelity and love. He has an eye for finding faults in everything. The scorching heat, long walk and conversations in the Kali pili and in the cafe show that he is just projecting his views on her. His views on khushboo's flatmate Sunita's breakup also shows how eager he is to judge others. One may hate him for his acerbic tongue and negative thoughts but he does make sense at some places, especially where he is talking about politics. The movie has Bollywood movies reference in the background and a constant preoccupation with cinema. Reference like Salman Khan could be nice and Aamir khan could be selfish, how movies don't portray the real sex and how porn has become an addiction; the impermissible topics that are not depicted in Hindi cinema get talked about with brutal honesty. 

His equation with Khushboo is nothing but a need base, pernicious equation. He doesn't miss a single instance to belittle and shame her, he finds her stable job boring and considers marriage as a sham that comes with a risk of infidelity. He compares her to heroine's sister in a B grade movie. The more he insults her, the more determined she seems to be in gaining his affection. The way he treats her in front of the cab driver, in the cafe, in the movie hall is a testament of an unhealthy relationship that is solely governed by the wishes of one person, the other is just there to oblige. The close up shot of Ajit Kokte on Juhu beach where Khushboo tells him, he is jealous of her stable life and where she shows him the mirror is a phenomenal shot.  Even when she agrees to go to the lodge with him he tries to keep an upper hand by saying she is not doing him a favour by satisfying his sexual needs. He tells her he is tolerating her because he loves her.   His expressions and how he manipulates her later by threatening to leave her gives an insight in his character. Khushboo is her vulnerable best in this scene. 

From gaslighting to verbal abuse to physical abuse, this movie covers the entire realm of what makes for an ugly relationship. The scenes in the lodge are vomitous and exasperating, the ugliness and toxicity reach at its peak when he hits her and continues to fuck her. Towards the end, the lines between the good and the bad get blurred. 

The scene in the end where Khushboo asks him laugh while she takes video of him and slaps him is the only time where her character gets her due and her final dialogue towards the end is savage best 'Film ho ya life, end toh honi hai'. All her bottled emotions, her anguish, humiliation find an outlet in the end where she dances to forget her sorrows. Khushboo is amazing in the movie as a malleable girl who yearns for the affection of a man who has nothing to offer her except for abuses and pain. 

Like Celeste in the Big Little Lies, Khushboo manages to end the toxic relationship. I hope no woman sees her past, present or future in this movie. Jaoon Kahan is excruciatingly painful to watch but everybody should watch it once as the best cure for the bad tendencies is to see them running in others. Both the characters have done an amazing job in portraying the ugly side of a toxic relationship. My hat tip to Aadish Keluskar for making a movie that disturbing enough to make people think.