Gehraiyaan (2022)

Sometimes I feel that OTT had really given a hard competition to monopoly in Bollywood; the great leading actors, producers or directors pushing dictatorship to some extent. They knew people would come to cinema to watch movies, where they already had a lot of control. And then came COVID, and any remaining bossing also saw fumes. OTT was a perfect medium for those, who deserved attention but somewhere were lost in void.

Why am I bringing all this up here? Because, that's what I felt after watching the great buzz movie called Gehraaiyaan.

With heavy starcast and budget, the movie had to somehow get the grip to showcase itself on television or electronic gadgets. Now I am not saying the movie was bad, but even not good as compared to the versatile content already available on OTT. You name good movies, series, any specific genre content, and it's all there. So how could Gehraaiyaan would have survived among humongous competition? Is it starcast? No way and there are tons of examples of failures from leading Bollywood celebrities in recent times. Something that would have flourished, say 5 years back, bit dust.

Now coming back to this movie:

1. Leading actors like Deepika Padukone furiuosly jabbing f word felt stretched and just for the sake. I didn't even like how she tried it so hard.

2. It's an adult movie, but what's adult in there, I got no idea. Kissing or a few intimate scenes? Really? It's like Ra-one trying hard to justify it was a sci-fi and tech oriented movie.

3. Normal acting by all the characters. Nothing that could auto emphasize by itself its greatness.

Overall, just an average stuff. Frankly, it was the movie team' totem to showcase great actors, a twitch in the end and marking A for a movie that people will watch it, i don't think that worked.

Fmovies: I watched Gehraiyaan on Primevideo in orig. Hindi w/Eng. Subs.

The first 40mn of the plot did not hold my interest and the mandatory Bollywood songs certainly didn't help, so I gave up .... but resumed the next day when the narrative suddenly became intriguing and engrossing enough to complete the film albeit with a few doses of Fast Forward!

Alisha (Deepika Padukone) a middle class yoga teacher and Tia (Ananya Pandey) a well to do scion of a business family are close first cousins meeting up after a gap of a few years, with their respective boyfriends in tow. Tia's interest is a builder Zain (Sidhant Chaturvedi : Inside Edge / Gully Boy) with a lucrative project in Alibag. Alisha's guy is Karan (Dhairya A) a struggling author. The two couples spend a weekend at Tia's luxurious beach front villa in Alibag where Alisha and Zain are greatly attracted to each other. The narration moves on draggingly predictable lines until Zain finds himself in big trouble on the business front. From this point, the film becomes engrossing with twists and turns, psychotic lovers, business problems and ... no further spoilers, watch to see how it all plays out.

The acting etc is quite good. Deepika in particular, excels in her portrayal of Alisha.

This could have been a much better film had the extraneous songs been knocked off and the build up in the first half been a lot tighter.

Gehraiyaan - the new Amazon Original Movie with Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi, and Ananya Panday - is a classic case of being all over the place. It starts off as a romantic character drama, as the Gehraiyaan trailers and songs have hinted at. An aimless woman (Deepika Padukone) is trying to pick between two guys and their polar-opposite philosophies, and a man who takes no prisoners (Siddhant Chaturvedi) is trying to have it all and juggle two worlds. But Gehraiyaan transforms into another beast over the course of its long 148 Minutes run-time, becoming more and more plot and event-driven. It's been described by "domestic neo-noir" by the Gehraiyaan cast and director Shakun Batra, but it's not that - Gehraiyaan bears no traits of the neo-noir genre. It's just a poor relationship love-drama.

Gehraiyaan primarily revolves around the lives of the aforementioned two characters. Alisha Khanna (Deepika Padukone) is a 30-year-old yoga instructor - she's been in a six-year-long relationship with Karan Arora (Dhairya Karwa) who quited his lucrative ad copywriter job and is now a struggling and unemployed novel writer. Alisha feels stuck in life, her career isn't going anywhere and she thinks she's moored to her boyfriend. And there's Zain Siddiqui (Siddhant Chaturvedi), a real estate developer who's engaged to Alisha's cousin Tia Khanna (Ananya Panday). Though Alisha and Tia grew up around each other, Tia is actually closer to Karan as they studied together in the US. As Alisha says early in Gehraiyaan, she knows her cousin through her boyfriend.

Returning to India after a while, Tia invites Alisha and Karan to spend a weekend with them at their Alibaug beachside bungalow. It's how Alisha and Zain's paths cross for the first time - and soon they discover they have more in common with one another than with their respective beaus. For one, they both like to think of themselves as outsiders. They are also similar in that they both have a traumatic past. And even though he's now in fiancée territory, Zain can't stop himself from flirting constantly with Alisha. You know where this is going - after all, the Gehraiyaan marketing machine has told you already. Alisha and Zain start seeing one another behind Tia and Karan's backs, which naturally leads to all sorts of complications. Though it's more than what you might expect.

These are the best portions of Gehraiyaan - the first 30 minutes or so - and Shakun Batra does well to develop the characters. Deepika Padukone's feels the most fleshed out. She's ambling through life, never ready to take charge, and she has convinced herself she has the worst luck. It's possibly a coping mechanism. Alisha doesn't want to end up like her mother who felt suffocated in her own relationship, but by reminding herself of this fact every day, it's almost as if she wills it to happen. Deepika Padukone appropriately plays Alisha as insecure and a bit bitter.

Following the first act that's largely told through Alisha's perspective, the bulk of the second shifts to flesh out Zain. Siddhant Chaturvedi brings a cheeky and menacing edge to Zain, though I couldn't help but feel that the character slid into generic territory. Gehraiyaan is clearly interested in showing that the guy who takes what he wants is clearly a symbol of toxic masculinity today. When driven into a corner, Zain isn't beyond gaslighting his loved ones and not owning up to his BS. But it's also here that

Gehraiyaan fmovies. Alisha (Deepika Padukone) is into a live-in relationship with Karan (Dhairya Karwa) for 6 years but feels claustrophobic now as she has been supporting him financially for a long time. Alisha has had a traumatic childhood, and faces depressive manoeuvres at times, resorting to Valium often. When Tia (Ananya Pandey), Alisha's first cousin, visits their family home in Alibaug with her fiance Zain (Siddhant Chaturvedi), and invites Alisha and Karan over to spend the weekend together, Alisha gets an opportunity to settle her longstanding score with Tia. Zain, who was also looking for a breakaway from his obligatory engagement with Tia, seizes the opportunity and commences on a passionate and steamy affair with Alisha. Both are committed to dumping their respective partners and build their future together, but fate has other plans I store, setting off a series of unfortunate events that spiral out of control quickly, creating complex situations that challenge loyalties and the very commitments that brought Alisha and Zain together.

Gehraiyaan is a drama noir that combines passion, love, lust, revenge, financial crime, and tragedy together into an overwhelming vortex that consumes all the characters. No one escapes unhurt as self-gratification takes over centrestage, and the two principal characters are ready to sacrifice everything else to meet their own goals. To some distance, they try to achieve this objective symbiotically, but after a while, Zain realises that Alisha is at best a huge problem to handle when matters go out of control. The issues in Gehraiyaan are all first world types - often pointing to a life lesson to keep relationships clean and be grateful, but director Shakun Batra has chosen depravity, moral decadence, and uncontrolled passion to erect the backbone of the film, throwing the protagonists' characters into an abyss of an unabashed, self centric catharsis.

Watch Gehraiyaan you must, because it is a very unique story content with a heavy second half filled with unexpected twists and turns that make you take sides often. But it leaves a deep sense of disturbance that's likely to trouble you for a couple of days as you'd still want to ask why people cannot hold on to relationships and show some patience, but that's besides the point. Deepika is amazingly emotive in her complex role of Alisha, and Siddhant Chaturvedi slams home the point of an entrepreneur who will stop at nothing. Ananya Pandey and Dhairya Karwa are passable, and Naseeruddin Shah is sadly wasted. The music of the movie is something that I cannot remember much of as the songs didn't create a recall value, but I must laud the fluid cinematography by Kaushal Shah that takes beauty to a different level.

Sameer lodaya.

Shakun has made this a new bold ,emotional and really beautiful.

The story as shown in trailer is far ahead than just a triangular affair there is enough maturity about the sequences happens in ones life and how does it reflects with your character..Deepika has played a weak emotional character which gets driven by the love shedding Siddhant both have played their role perfectly and created a hard chemistry of boldness, emotions ,hatred on screen in support with ananya and dhairya

Shakun has magnificently directed and created best quality of love ,emotions ,humour ,drama ,entanglements, songs ,beautiful locations, good costumes ,boldness ,commercial touch ,maturity ,gripping pace and all the elements were perfectly controlled where you will never feel anything is overdone

One has to accept this is just not a urban movie but a ott product where you have to accept this kind of entertainment

The makers have given you everything to enjoy this weekend.

I'm quite frustrated seeing all the pessimism surrounding this film, and I feel pity for those who have misinterpreted the message. Being a responsible reviewer as well as a fellow admirer of this wonderful medium; I would like to present my side of the argument.

Hear me out, let me explain...

"Gehraiyaan" is a tale of flawed individuals more than anything else, like a bare exhibition of human relationships. Be it parenthood, sisterhood, or romantic affectations; Gehraiyaan takes on the mantle of showcasing all these different dynamics and the social stigmas that comes alongside.

This certainly isn't glorifying infidelity nor does it set out to rationalize the characters and their iniquities; the way I see it, the film did the exact opposite! Batra's narration depicted the bad choices and the consequences that followed. Amongst this pair of individuals, nobody was perfect, they all had flaws just like everyone else does as human beings. And "Gehraiyaan" with its innate dissertation attempted to illustrate the painful reality we all want to run away from.

While on one hand, it very much instigates the feel of salvation, favours the idea of moving on; on the other, it gets to a relatively different verdict, where it exemplifies the fact (the last scene with that Old Lady), that no matter how hard we try to get over our sins, the past will always catch up. The memories will haunt our thoughts till the end of time.

Although, I do understand that many people might find these intricacies, a bit difficult to comprehend. Therefore, let's just put aside the narrative for a moment and let us all cordially appreciate how invigorating the presentation is on a technical level. I simply adore the visuals. The roaring waves of the sea symbolised the endless rifts in our conscience, So articulated, isn't it? The same goes for Music! I became infatuated with the composition. It not only intensified the very essence of dramatic portions but also set the right kind of mood and ambience the film otherwise insisted on.

Now, on the subject of performances, the entire ensemble poured their hearts out. It seems the majority of the audience is only interested in the contours of intimacy but not the rationales behind the same. I don't know the problem people have with Deepika Padukone, nor do I care, but nobody in their sane minds could deny the capacity she holds as an actor. Yet again, What an astonishing performance, Deepika for me was unmatched, unparalleled in here.

Siddhant Chaturvedi is another highlight. Since the announcement, all eyes were on him, we all expected him to deliver and let me just say, he doesn't disappoint. Ananya Pandey had gone through a lot of complaints and disapprovals down the years. Perhaps a bit too much at times.

Not me though, as I have always been a well-wisher, and I knew that with a little bit of guidance and under a competent director, she would do well. And guess what? She has made some progress. Dhairya Karwa as Karan is perhaps the weakest link of this feature, although it's not entirely his fault as the writing on his part hasn't been up to the mark as compared with what others have gotten!

At long last, we've reached the part where I normally draw a conclusion. But before I do that, I hope, I was able to clear all your doubts, if not, have it your way, do as you please. Then you have to come to terms with the fact that maybe it's not made for you. "Gehraiyaan" is on