Ajnabee kaun ho tum?. Review on Strangers

I am not sure how anyone with a financial bent of mind would make a movie like Strangers because it caters to a very exclusive section of the Indian audience. You realize that even before the movie begins. The theatre was filled to thrity percent of its capacity on its opening Sunday in Bangalore.

Apparently adapted from Strangers in the train by Alfred Hitchcock, Strangers is a dark take on human relationships. I am all for remakes, provided they are done well and suit the Indian milieu. Manorama 6 feet under came close to doing that this year.

The director of Strangers, however, is hell bent on recreating an English setting for his Hindi audience. The dialogues are part Hindi part English, the film is shot extensively in England, and where the movie actually fails is with its characters. Although Indian, their value systems are anything but, and although that is not surprising for Indians raised outside their country, one still cannot relate to these people. Except for their physical features, and instances where they speak Hindi, the actors are far removed from anything Indian. So, in the end, the movie ends up like a badly concocted Indo-european dish. The only people who will like this movie are the pretentious lot who want to be different just for the sake of it.

Release Date: 14 December 2007

Producer: Uday Tiwari

Director: Anand Rai

Music Director: Vinay Tiwari

Lyricist: Javed Akhtar

Playback: Lata Mangeshkar, Sonu Nigam, Shreya Ghoshal

Cinematographer: Manoj Gupta

*Star Cast:

*Actors: Kay Kay Menon, Jimmy Shergill

Actresses: Nandana Sen

Special Appearance: Kitu Gidwani,  Sonali Kulkarni

Story

Two strangers(Jimmy Shergill and Kay Kay Menon) board the same compartment in England on a bright sunny day. Through their conversations aided by flashbacks, you come to know that they both lead a tumultous existence. Jimmy's marriage is breaking apart partly due to his failure as an author, and partly due to his wife's straying ways. Kay Kay Menon's wife Sonali Kulkarni has turned recluse after her son's accident. She arranges havans on her son's birthday and believes that he is still alive. Just before the movie breaks for interval, Menon comes up with an idea that can change their lives. He suggests that each of them murder the other's wife and because they are strangers, the police would have no motive to offer for the murders. What follows is a bizarre turn of events leading to a somewhat predictable climax.

Pros

The movie's production values are excellent. Jimmy and Kay Kay do a good job in the acting department. Sonali Kulkarni has little to do and Nandana Sen is just about adequate. The background score rises up to the  sombre mood of the movie.

*Cons

*There are glaring loopholes in the storyline. Anand Rai is confused about getting the setting and his characters right. I know of no Indian man who will take kindly to his wife sleeping with other men every day. Menon's plan about killing their wives evokes a dead-pan reaction from Jimmy. Seriously, I have connected better to the 80's heroine screaming for the hero in the climax than the ones in this movie. Anand Tiwar's music is jaded. The special effects feel outdone and monotonous after a certain point.  Also, there was no reason to go and shoot a couple of scenes in Goa when anywhere in England would have worked just fine.

*Final take

*The movie is worth a watch on a dull sunday evening when you have enough time and patience to watch just about anything. If you are the one who likes the'different' kind of movies and absolutely detest your  movies masala maar ke, you might actually like this one. For people who have watched the English version(which I am sure is several notches above this hotch-potch), and whose attention span is less than a single flap of the humming bird, stay miles away.