‘Kahan Shuru Kahan Khatam’ Review: Old Wine in an Older Bottle
Most mainstream films contain a bit of social commentary, but in the case of Kahan Shuru Kahan Khatam, the social commentary contains a bit of filmmaking.
Director: Saurabh Dasgupta
Writers: Laxman Utekar, Rishi Virmani
Cast: Dhvani Bhanushali, Aashim Gulati, Rajesh Sharma, Rakesh Bedi, Supriya Pilgaonkar
Language: Hindi
Being a modern Hindi film is not easy. It faces an uphill battle from the moment it’s conceived. Being made is hard enough; being released widely is harder. As if that isn’t enough, it then has to contend with the modern movie-going experience. The film has to be good enough to keep winning back the viewer’s interest amid dozens of ads, a few dozen more trailers, an endless interval and anti-smoking disclaimers. Or, at the very least, it has to be good enough to not let the viewer forget why they chose to sit in the dark with strangers. Cinema halls are no longer in service of a film, which is why some films emerge in service of cinema halls.
Kahan Shuru Kahan Khatam (which loosely translates to “Where does it begin and where does it end?”) is the latest example of this “multiplex movie”. I built up to this pun patiently, so here goes: it’s hard to tell where the promotions end and where the movie begins. It simultaneously unfolds like a glossy bridalwear ad, a dull public service announcement, a choppy trailer for itself, and even exudes the rhythm-breaking emptiness of an interval. A character is introduced smoking in slow-motion, only to never be seen smoking in the rest of the film. There’s your disclaimer, too.
Most mainstream films contain a bit of social commentary, but in the case of Kahan Shuru Kahan Khatam, the social commentary contains a bit of filmmaking. The message of women’s empowerment is so loud and unsubtle that the film stops just short of freezing, dropping the pretence of storytelling, and directly yelling at the viewer through the screen. At one point, two characters converse about patriarchy — or rather, narrate to each other India’s fraught relationship with patriarchy — in an empty classroom. The implication is that the film is literally teaching us. But who’s going to point out to them the irony of discussing discrimination in a classroom that belongs to a coaching institute called KKK?
In case you’re wondering, this is the premise of KSKK. It starts off as a generic romcom: Krishna (Aashim Gulati) is a compulsive wedding crasher because — believe it or not — he grew up as a pandit’s son-cum-assistant who never had a chance to enjoy weddings. Unfortunately for him, his latest conquest is undone by a runaway bride named Meera (Dhvani Bhanushali). He gets entangled in her escape, and her scary family — including two brothers named Gautam and Gambhir (probably the only semi-funny gag in the film) — believes that Meera has eloped with Krishna. They set out to hunt the couple down. The hideouts include Krishna’s apartment, which, for some reason, has two gay students who insist on being offensive caricatures, and Krishna’s chaste family home, which is a matriarchal setup led by a Gulabi-Gang-style vigilante.
Since everything must be gender-subversive, this Meera is no devotee of Krishna — or any man for that matter. She escaped her own wedding because “nobody asked me if I wanted to get married”. She speaks like a woke Twitter (X) user who’s being forced to live in the real world. You know she’s different because she is smoking in her intro shot; she also scowls a lot. Lest it isn’t clear yet, every other woman in her household speaks from behind their veil. The running joke — that it’s difficult to tell who they’re addressing — brings to mind Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies, a film that delivered a similar message in infinitely smarter ways. You can tell this is a Bollywood launch vehicle because the performer being launched gets all the cool staging: wedding wear for nearly the entire film, driving a convertible, less dialogue, sarcastic expressions, and even a gun in hand.
At one point, the film is so desperate to feel like a film that it breaks into a random kidnapping subplot that makes no difference to the emotional continuity of the characters. The climactic monologue is a speech by Krishna that sounds like a nice PowerPoint presentation, with statistics and everything.
Performance-wise, Aashim Gulati is not great at playing a beta male hunk; physical comedy is not his thing. It’s nice to see veterans like Rakesh Bedi and Supriya Pilgaonkar, but their characters understandably seem to be fighting the story they’re in. They do not win.
The title of this film refers to the second line from the Lata Mangeshkar classic ‘Ajeeb dastaan’ from the film Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai (1960). The theme music for Meera is an instrumental riff on a famous Kishore Kumar song. One of the big movie trailers shown in the interval reimagines another famous Kishore Kumar song. The listings at the multiplex feature titles like Yash Chopra’s Veer-Zaara (2004) and Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar (1963), among others. It’s a strange time for contemporary Hindi cinema; thanks to a dearth of originality, the line between nostalgia and cinephilia has erased itself. People like visiting the past because the present does not offer enough.
To be fair, the hall was half-full for Kahan Shuru Kahan Khatam — not a bad feat for any new release these days. But keeping with its tone, I find it necessary to spell out the subtext here. The film released on National Cinema Day, when multiplex tickets were priced at ₹99 only. Most moviegoers were college students and young couples looking for respite from the September heat. A few precious hours of air-conditioned privacy goes a long way — be it a derivative 105-minute romcom or just a series of mechanical commercials, the entertainment itself ceases to matter. Who cares about beginnings and endings?