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Fitoor

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2.9

Summary

Fitoor
syed acafe ali@akifali2009
Feb 13, 2016 02:16 PM, 944 Views
Average movie

Ambition and beauty occupy virtually every frame of director Abhishek Kapoor’s Fitoor, which is based on Charles Dickens’ 19th century novel Great Expectations. Shot exquisitely( by Anay Goswami) and mounted lavishly, the film unfolds leisurely in a seemingly timeless world.


Kapoor( who has co-written the film with Supratim Sen) moves the story from Victorian England to snow-swept Kashmir, where nine-year-old Noor becomes instantly besotted with the snooty, aristocratic Firdaus the moment he sets eyes on her at the estate of her mother Hazrat Begum( Tabu) . Although the children become close friends, Noor is repeatedly made aware that Firdaus is out of his reach.


Fifteen years later, now chiseled and frequently shirtless like an Abercrombie model, a grown up Noor( Aditya Roy Kapur), who has blossomed into a promising artist, lands a scholarship to an art residency in Delhi from a mysterious benefactor. Even as he’s experiencing his first brush with success, he meets Firdaus( now played by Katrina Kaif) again, and realizes she still makes his heart beat faster. But the knockout redhead keeps sending mixed signals, ultimately insisting on an icy distance between them as she prepares to marry a Pakistani politician( Rahul Bhatt) chosen by her mother.


I found myself completely invested in the story and the characters during the film’s first hour, but the screenplay isn’t as surefooted post-intermission. The tense political climate of Kashmir is merely referred to in passing, never exploited to serve the story in the way that, say, Haider did. In a clever scene that sadly never translates as powerfully as it was intended to, Noor chants a potent political slogan to allegorize the love triangle between him, Firdaus, and her Pakistani fiancée. Other than that it would appear that the film is set in Kashmir purely to milk its aesthetic beauty.


It’s in the second hour again that we come closer to understanding Hazrat Begum, who represents the fascinating Miss Havisham character from Dickens’ classic. Tabu is mercurial as the bitter, lonely old crone who sets Noor up for heartbreak, and her descent into madness is chilling. The writing isn’t always consistent – one moment she’s in a wheelchair attached to a drip, next thing she’s all perfectly coiffed and outfitted, showing up at a London art event – yet Tabu largely humanizes a character that has long slipped into caricature.

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