This is probably the first suspense thriller dark comedy of sorts kind of a film after blackmail whose trailer attracted me.
Spoiler Alert: you may not want to read further if you haven\’t yet watched this film and are planning to!
It is pretty clear from the trailer that Akash, Ayushman\’s character is not blind for real. However I will not reveal the story scene by scene here. It\’s not just twist and turns in the movie that keep you engrossed but number of open inferences that you can draw from a particular scene. For example, if Aakash wasn\’t blind how did he collide with Sophie\’s scooter in the first place? Was it that he had already done a background check on her and bumped into her to gain sympathy, empathy and get a breakthrough in her father\’s diner. I also did suspect that Pramod Sinha wasn\’t murdered but it was during an altercation that he died.
There was this movie which featured the road right in front of my house and now this movie has the road in front of my workplace. The movie has been almost entirely shot in Pune including shots of Vishrambag Wada, Tulshibaug Ganpati, Magarpatta and predominantly Prabhat Road. The writer director Sriram Raghavan, Ayushman, Tabu and Radhika Apte all have done offbeat movies in the past and this is another feather in their cap. There are barely any full fledged songs in the movie and pace of the movie keeps you hooked.
The ending has been kept open as to how Akash got his vision back. To get the answer I decided to watch the short film The Piano Tuner, which is the official inspiration of this film, as mentioned in the closing credits. In fact, the short film reaffirmed my opinion that Aakash is trying to gain sympathy and empathy by acting to be blind.
Does this video on YouTube by a channel called One life that quite literally dissected the ending is what the writers wanted to convey? It says that Aakash accepted the doctor\’s offer and got the cornea transplant. His further explanation of the scenes and reference to the Hollywood movie The usual suspects makes you believe that he is talking sense… Here\’s the link!