There’s a strange strength in Kashmir that makes you want to swallow all of it with all your senses, all your being. It is this’fitoor’ - obsession, if you will - that director Abhishek Kapoor makes complete use of in his third film Fitoor( 2)
Aditya Roy Kapur and Katrina Kaif in a still from Fitoor
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Cast: Aditya Roy Kapur, Katrina Kaif, Tabu, Lara Dutta, Rahul Bhat
Direction: Abhishek Kapoor
Ratings: ( 3/5)
Centuries ago, Amir Khusro had said’Gar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast / hameen-ast-o, hameen-ast-o hameen-ast.’ Roughly translated to English, the couplet means’If there’s a paradise on earth / It is here, it is here, it is here.’ Emperor Jehangir then immortalised these two lines when Kashmir struck him numb and made him blurt them out, almost involuntarily.
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There’s a strange strength in Kashmir that makes you want to swallow all of it with all your senses, all your being. It is this’fitoor’ - obsession, if you will - that director Abhishek Kapoor makes complete use of in his third film Fitoor.
Set against the backdrop of the Kashmir of autumn-winter, Fitoor lets your eyes feast on Kashmir till you no longer know what to do with such overwhelming beauty.
Based on Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, Noor( Aditya Roy Kapur) is the orphan Pip in this tale. Dickens’s Estelle is Firdaus( Katrina Kaif) here, and the eccentric, mercurial Miss Havisham is Tabu’s Begum Hazrat.
Noor, the Boy From Dal, is taken to the Begum’s palace on one winter day by his brother-in-law. His eyes chance upon Begum’s daughter Firdaus, and this pretty much changes the course of his life.
The heartbroken Begum notices Noor’s talent and realises that the boy is deeply infatuated with her daughter. Hazrat pushes him to make something out of himself by saying that that’s the only way he can accomplish the prize that is Firdaus.
After Srinagar is rocked by a blast to which Noor loses his sister, Firdaus is sent off to London for her studies. The Boy From Dal immerses himself in his work, in making himself’Firdaus ke kaabil’( worthy of Firdaus) .
Meanwhile, a person lands at the now-23-year-old Noor’s doorstep with an offer he cannot refuse. An identity-undisclosed person wants to fund Noor’s education in art. Armed with this scholarship, Noor arrives in Delhi, where his path crosses with that of Firdaus. The dormant emotions come gushing out of every pore of Noor’s being and threatens to engulf Firdaus. But what use is an intense love story without the mandatory heartbreak?
Abhishek Kapoor’s adaptation of the Dickens classic is laudable in parts. Along with Supratik Sen, Kapoor crafts his tale to suit the milieu of the modern-day Kashmir. Indo-Pak friendship and politics are blended in with Noor Nizami’s screams of’Doodh maangoge toh kheer denge, Kashmir maangoge toh cheer denge’.