The Ballad of Susanah.

“On the page it looked nothing. The beginning
simple, almost comic. Just a pulse - bassoons and basset horns -
like a rusty squeezebox. Then suddenly - high above it - an
oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, till a clarinet took
over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight”

- Salieiri’s description of Mozart’s music, Amadeus.


A very passionate Atonio Salieri talks about Mozart’s music in the movie Amadeus. And here is a very passionate movie buff(me) talking about sheer brilliance. A symphony. Yes, 7 Khoon Maaf is a symphony. Ah! What a movie?!

Vishal Bharadwaj is a brilliant director. He makes a movie so pristinely written, so magically manufactured with such finesse, it makes you feel nice. After watching the movie, you would feel as warm as you would feel when you kiss the one girl of your dreams, who happens to be your reality. The warmth! Ah! The sweetness! Yes! I AM talking about the movie.

The movie is originally dark. It revels in the decadence of grey shades of every human. That is the beauty of it. It does not glorify the white; it does not denounce the black; it subtly embraces the gray!

With bare minimum dialogues given to Priyanka Chopra, Bharadwaj uses Ruskin Bond’s Susanah and creates a protagonist who remains a protagonist throughout the film. Never once in the movie would you hate Priyanka Chopra. You quietly accept the happenings of the film and just watch the magic unravel. It’s really sexy to watch that happen.

Vivaan Shah. If he is the future of Bollywood, then the future will be a legend. He can act. He can act very well. He is so convincing as the smitten teenager, that you will fall in love with him. I’d go gay for him(figuratively). It’s delightful to watch him. Amazing casting sense features throughout the movie.

Neil Nitin Mukesh is fierce and ideal for the first husband. He just fits. John Abraham is watchable, but he’d do a better job showing of part of his derrière on the beaches of Miami than a drug crazed, cross-dresser. Irfan Khan is a poem unto himself. He smile at whatever he does and you smile a big one here. Anu Kapoor is fun to watch. He brings back memories of his role from Darr and they are all pleasant memories. The Russian dude is good. Nicely, neatly done. Naseeruddin is ethereal. He comes in for a short part, but you believe him as the Modhu-da and here is the best part: RUSKIN BOND IS IN THE MOVIE! Yup! I ended up shouting in the theatre, pointing at the screen and yelling “BOND! RUSKIN BOND!” and that is the brilliance of this movie. Bharadwaj gets Bond to play a role in his own book! You will only smile at such a thing!

The ending of the movie is mind-blowing. You will realise the magnitude of the ending after a few minutes and you will go high! VERY HIGH! Well, I did! The last five minutes of the movie, you keep guessing what the ending would be and trust me, you will guess wrong! I didn’t stop smiling for half an hour after the movie.

After all this, you would ask why the movie tanked. Well, Vishal Bharadwaj IS an intelligent director, but he made one gross error. He assumed that the Indian Audience is Intelligent too! One BIG error. Throughout the movie, there is no single scene where there is a date or time or year coming up on screen. He does not explicitly give the timeline. He gives the timeline using real life incidences, like Operation BluesStar. Babri Masjid. The Kabul Plane Hijack. 26/11. There many such instances in the movie where he forgot that the audience is after all stupid. Bourgeois.

Thus the Indian Audience is, Hence Screwed.