This romance starring Vikrant Massey and Shanaya Kapoor becomes tiresome due to its sugary contrivances and poetic excess.
“Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan” (Hindi)
Santosh Singh is the director.
Vikrant Massey, Shanaya Kapoor, and Zain Khan Durrani are among the cast.
Time to run: 140 minutes
This story is about a man who is blind and falls in love with a stranger without telling them about his condition.
A title like “Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan” means trouble. This indicates that a significant amount of poetry will soon be featured on the screen. In Santosh Singh’s romance drama, Radio Metaphor plays in the background of conversations, voiceovers, and song lyrics. The hero, who is blind, says of his love, “She saw me not with sight, but insight.” A beat later: “Pyaar andha hota hai” (Love is blind). The movie’s fixation with sight-based metaphors and poetic puns becomes… a blind spot.
On the train to Dehra, they cross paths. Musician and lyricist Jahaan (played by Vikrant Massey) is in need of a creative reset in the hills. Saba (Shanaya Kapoor), a theater performer hoping to make her Bollywood film debut, is the passenger in the coupe across from him. She claims that she is wearing a blindfold to prepare for a significant audition and has decided to keep it on until the end of her journey. Saba must travel alone and unaccompanied because her manager just left.
This has two implications:
1) The secret to Bollywood is unquestionably method acting, not familial ties.
2) Saba is unaware that her co-passenger, with whom she has developed a close relationship, is blind. Oddly enough, Jahaan cooperates.
At this early point, the movie deviates from its thin source material, the well-known Ruskin Bond short tale “The Eyes Have It.” Bond’s novel’s main character engaged in a harmless game of deceit, a minor pastime that she enjoyed while traveling on trains. Saba meets Jahaan in Mussoorie and bunkers down during his stay, but Jahaan is committed to the journey. A near-accident has occurred. In the rain, there is dancing. A kiss is shared. Then her manager disappears just as she is about to experience love.
Some romances don’t have much give; if you pull them too far, they break in your hand. Even if the scenes at Mussoorie are unpleasant, they have a welcoming and friendly feeling underneath. The pauses at Maggi and Sunset Points are fun, and Massey and Kapoor aren’t as mismatched as their ages might make you think. Kapoor is mostly calm and confident in her first role, but her sobbing game is just a B-minus (it falls behind cousin Janhvi).
This is a concern, however, because the movie jumps ahead three years to Europe, where a significant amount of crying and longing dominates the story. We see Saba’s unhappy winter, and then Jahaan comes back into her life by accident (sorry) and changes everything. The emotional auditing is at an all-time high, and large, Bhansali-like themes are weighing down this small movie. Of course, Vishal Mishra’s soundtrack isn’t modest at all; it’s a full-on symphony of coolly produced pain.
The last time Vikrant Massey appeared in a movie involving trains, it was a propaganda film. The actor is in a better mood here, playing a savant with a guitar and messy hair who sings terms like “taiyaari” and “tarakii” with the right amount of artistic flair. For a moment, I thought about Lootera, Massey’s debut movie, and how his flawless line readings would make sequences with Ranveer Singh come to life. Massey has made it big in Bollywood more than ten years later. But Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan is not his Lootera at all. Saba continues, “Stardom is important, but talent is fleeting.” I don’t know.