Gehraiyaan Movie Review: Chaos That Almost Soothes You, Thanks To Deepika Padukone, Shakun Batra & Team!

Gehraiyaan Movie Review Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0 stars3.5

Star Cast: Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday, Dhairya Karwa, Rajat Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah

Director: Shakun Batra

Gehraiyaan Movie Review Out! (Photo Credit: Still From Gehraiyaan)

What’s Good: Bundling so many emotions, expressing them through just four of your characters to create an emotional furore is Shakun Batra for you & of course two very memorable performances by DP & Sid

What’s Bad: As the title suggests, it does drown you to a point where you might feel shortness of breath but trust me, it’ll be worth it!

Loo Break: You blink, you miss! You pee? You, better shut down the film

Watch or Not?: Only if you’re not one of those who complain about too many dialogues in the genre of dialogue-heavy films

Available On: Amazon Prime Video

Runtime: 148 Minutes

User Rating:

We land into Alisha’s (Deepika Padukone) head when she was a child, witnessing her parents’ internal disputes and now that she’s grown up to be a Yoga instructor, how her childhood still affect her. A family reunion with cousin Tia (Ananya Panday) on their old farmhouse introduces us to T’s fiance Zain (Siddhant Chaturvedi) & Al’s boyfriend Karan (Dhairya Karwa).

Alisha finds the incompleteness of her life getting filled with Zain and they start seeing each other after that trip. Tia & Karan, unaware of the same, continue to love their partners as passionately as before. The chaos begins when Al asks Zain to confess their relationship to Tia. Amid the personal & professional mess, the lives of all four characters drastically change.

Gehraiyaan Movie Review Out! (Photo Credit: Still From Gehraiyaan)

Gehraiyaan Movie Review: Script Analysis

Back in the day, director Shakun Batra’s Kapoor & Sons beautifully dissected the drama of a dysfunctional upper middle-class family and we all lost our minds. While deep-diving into Gehraiyaan, I just couldn’t help but notice how despite the ‘class difference’, I’ve been a bit of every character Batra has penned with Ayesha Devitre, Sumit Roy & Yash Sahai. I’ve been a person who has over-loved in his life, been used as a doormat by many, also have taken those people for granted who mattered. That’s where the beauty of this script lies for me, even if you can’t connect with the characters, on the whole, you could find a bit of yourself in every one of them.

I also understand why many won’t connect with the emotional core of this one, will call it a ‘dialogue-heavy’, ‘slow’ film because this doesn’t give you whatever you ask for from the menu, it serves a tale of infidelity sprinkled with a whole lot of depression, and that’s a dish many wouldn’t want to feast upon. But for a hopeless romantic sucker like me, this is witnessing a seamless mosaic-like life of four people getting demolished, with their chaotic upbringing playing an important role in doing so. From Deepa Mehta in Arth to Ritesh Batra in The Lunchbox, we’ve seen writers exploring infidelity and Batra tries his hand by beautifully weaving the chaos caused in his leads’ personal lives interlinked with their professional mess.

Kaushal Shah’s camerawork lays down to be the bridge for us to walk into all the characters’ heads & hearts. He plays a lot around (extreme) close-up shots that just pop to capture the emotions of the characters. I followed till 12 for the number of times we see waves crashing to depict the ‘gehraiyaan’ (and, yes the waves get bigger as the conflicts go deeper) but then lost the count. Editor Nitesh Bhatia’s consistency in structuring the screenplay falters a bit in the second half as the film starts to feel lengthy by then, but that’s also because of Batra’s certain questionable choices to treat his already-developed characters.

Gehraiyaan Movie Review: Star Performance

Deepika Padukone not only convinces you to believe in Alisha’s mess, but her conviction is so strong that you start feeling sad for her and that’s the power of a strong performance. Let the birds whisper what they may, she has spoken up with an impeccable portrayal of what almost seems too personal for her. She gets Alisha so well that you can almost feel a personal connection between the reel & real avatars.

It happens to only a few to get someone as layered as Zain but Siddhant Chaturvedi hits the ball out of the park. From being charming to chilling, he carries the varied moods of his character like a boss. If you can do characters like Zain and MC Sher in your first 3 films, the sky is the limit for you my friend.

Ananya Panday is better than what she has been before this, but to be honest that wasn’t even a high bar to match. Expressions still stay limited even though she expands her range by exploring Tia. Dhairya Karwa in his limited screen space doesn’t disappoint. He shares a couple of beautifully acted scenes with Deepika Padukone making for an apt choice to play Karan.

Both Rajat Kapoor & Naseeruddin Shah don’t add much to the story but remain to be a magical addition to the supporting cast for the flawless talent they possess.

Gehraiyaan Movie Review Out! (Photo Credit: Still From Gehraiyaan)

Gehraiyaan Movie Review: Direction, Music

Only with his third film, Shakun Batra has created a sense of confidence in me no other director could’ve in such a short period. He not only understands the emotions backing his characters but is also a master at executing them. Relying heavily on ambient sounds (like traffic noise, bustling tones of waves clashing etc.), he has skilled himself to orchestrate tension on-screen. With this one, Batra decides to dive as deep as possible to present his characters without any filter as they all bare themselves in front of you one layer at a time.

OAFF, Savera’s background score is as melancholic as Batra’s vision while penning the gloomy lives of these four very different people. As already mentioned, the BGM just merges into the ambient sounds so well that you don’t even realise it’s gone. Doobey perfectly does the job it was composed for of popping up the se*y chemistry between Zain & Alisha. The title track is almost laid out as an extended dialogue to what the characters are trying to communicate without saying anything.

Gehraiyaan Movie Review: The Last Word

All said and done, I don’t remember when was the last time a film’s title did so much justice to its story. It just drowns you so deep to a point where you might feel shortness of breath, but it’s all worth it.

Three and a half stars!

Gehraiyaan Trailer

Gehraiyaan releases on 11th February, 2022.

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