‘Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha’ movie review: Ajay Devgn and Tabu struggle in a dated romance

Ajay Devgn and Tabu in a still from ‘Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha’
| Photo Credit: YouTube/ NH Studioz

Sometimes we come across stories on the crime pages of vernacular newspapers where the motive behind the offense leaves us bemused. Stories where a person sacrifices his career and existence so that his love can live on. Writer-director Neeraj Pandey takes a break from his edge-of-the-seat espionage thrillers to mount one such tale of renunciation in romance with Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha. Promising to be rousing in its simplicity, it turns out to be a boring, dated, and, at times, inadvertently amusing experience.

The problem is that the soul of the story doesn’t consistently translate on screen. Perhaps the bittersweet idea would have been better served by a cast sans stars. Perhaps, the production could have made an effort to find some new locations for romance in Mumbai and create sets that don’t look like one. The trailer could have been less expository and in his treatment of the central character, Neeraj could have been less adulatory. It is the kind of film where the background score fails to keep the emotional secret of the scenes.

Deeply in love, Krishna (Shantanu Maheshwari/ Ajay Devgn) and Vasudha (Saiee Manjrekar/ Tabu) get separated by circumstances. Living in a chawl, her social background forces Vasudha to move on with life but she cannot keep Krishna out of her thoughts. For Krishna, Vasudha remains the purpose of his life. How the two would engage when they eventually meet again is the purpose of the film. Unfortunately, the journey to the incident that separated the two is more engaging than what happens afterward, largely because of the young actors playing younger versions of the stars.

Neeraj beats so many drums around Ajay to serve his image that the impact of sacrifice, the leitmotif of love, get silenced. The pain, loneliness, and suffering hardly seep through as the film is focused on creating a halo around its leading man. In keeping with Neeraj’s spy space, Krishna needed to remain under the radar but the director is a little too keen to celebrate the unusual larger-than-life appeal of the character. After casting a hero in a seemingly non-heroic role, he keeps manufacturing ways to shower stardust on him.

No doubt, there is still space for selfless love, there is still an audience for old school melodrama that Ajay and Tabu have the chemistry and the wherewithal to sell. However, their bond here doesn’t feel aligned with the soul of the story. Their conversations are more ho-hum than heady and M.M. Kreem’s melodies don’t help their cause either. Jimmy Shergill as the third wheel in a love story has become as predictable as sunrise. He serves merely as a ritual and he makes us well aware of it.

The situation provides opportunities for self-referential humour but it doesn’t quite land. The only time it really catches one by surprise is when Krishna’s friend Jignesh (Jay Upadhay, the ubiquitous malleable friend material in Hindi films) turns on the radio in the car and it plays Jeeta Tha Jikse Liye (Dilwale, 1993), the ballad of the spurned lover in the 1990s.

The lopsided treatment ensures seasoned players cannot carry forward the innocent romantic connection depicted by Shantanu and Saiee as their younger versions. Shantanu, who showed that he has the verve and skill for the big screen in Gangubai Kathiawadi, once again impresses as the young Krishna. Saiee proves to be a competent foil as the demure yet gutsy girl-next-door, but a TV soap-like treatment leaves only thin bubbles in the air. One never gets the impression that Shantanu and Saiee could become Ajay and Tabu physically and emotionally.

Usually in Bollywood sagas, the younger versions are positioned in a way that you wait for the seniors to arrive and take over the scene. Here one waits for the flashbacks to liven up the scenario. This divide reduces AMKDT to an uneven theatrical experiment where the source material is strong, the start offers a spark but the end product feels false.

Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha is currently running in theatres