What remains? Sirf mein aur mere
aalishaan mohabat!! The protagonist laments. That is the problem with Abhishek
Kapoor and his Fitoor.
One dark night in the snow clad Kashmir a little boy Noor (Abrar) runs into a
terrorist on the run. This is the prologue to a narrative that then takes you
through reels of calf love that starts with an eerie feel of doom. The gal is rich
and full of attitude, the guy is poor and full of hesitation. There is also the
rich poor divide and the poor boy now visits the palace run the control of
Begum Hazrat (Tabu) whose ward Firdaus is the girl who wears her attitude on
her sleeve.
Time moves our principal characters’ age to move their ways. Firdaus (Katrina
Kaif) is at the London School of Design, while the local Pip Noor has his
unidentified benefactor. He becomes a great modern artist sculpture and
painter. The two who had earlier parted ways are bound to meet. While Noor is
assisted by art enthusiast Leena Baker (Lara Dutta) the world laps up his works
with unmatched enthusiasm.
So we have the brewing love story of the rich girl and poor boy. The
complications are however that Firdaus has a past. Mom Begum Hazrat has had her
black baggage. She in her youth (Aditi Rao Hydari) had eloped and is forced to
return home after being jilted by her lover. In the huge palace that she now
dwells in, Begum plays her games and ensures that the brewing romance does not
take off. Firdaus is engaged to a minister from the other side of the border
Bilal (Rahul Bhatt). While Noor is madly in love with Firdaus, the latter is
constantly reminding him that she is engaged to Bilal and her commitment is to
her fiancé.
The sculptor is thus chasing a dream that is bound to be a disaster. The rich
girl is playing it safe. The Lady is playing her games and love is the visible
casualty. Technically the film is to be assessed from two wise statements
stated in the film: Dil ki suna karo, aur who ab tumhara kahan raha! The film
maker has to go by what his heart commands and he is so committed to the end
product that he loses the creative passion of being the detached creator.
Qayamat bhi kya cheez hai: na dastak, na awaaz: Our director has the brooding
disaster creep into his script without warning. Resultantly he has everything
going his way and yet he fails to deliver that final product that could make
this Indian version of the Great Expectations a masterpiece.
Ideally one would think that a Charles Dickens tale is fine inspiration and a
great breeding ground for a Hindi film. Yet the film maker fails to deliver the
final punch. This is not to say that the film is not good. In fact, it is a
very engaging film to the discerning. From the moment when a bomb blast happens
on the streets of the city to the fine conflict between the raw and suave, the
cultivated and the pure is stark in visibility and moves without about trying
to build a case in favour of the virtues of the honest poor lover. The film
maker tries too much in the later part thus getting the audience a tad confused
and tied up in knots. The skeletons falling off the cupboard leave the audience
a tad confused. The film swings between aching and enduring moments to bland
and structured moments. The mood swings leave you with a product that lacks
consistency. The problem with Fitoor is that it lacks exactly that- passion.
The end product is too sculpted to be touching. If all this is not enough the
Dickens tale suddenly presents a Howard Roark scenario akin to the Fountainhead
climax where the artist completely destroys his own masterpiece
Performances are a tad disappointing. Me thinks Katrina is a bad choice in the
first place for a role that carries so much of inbuilt conflict. Tabu just
takes her self too seriously. She paints her grey laboriously and makes an
effort to remind the viewer of her Haider outing. The most genuine of all seems
Aditya Roy Kapoor and even he is short of the drunker rejection he translated
so well in his earlier outing.
Great expectations? Good but not great results.
Rating: 2.5
– Complicated narrative.
+ Amazing cinematography dialogues and background score.
L. Ravichander.