KANK - Kabhi Acting Na Karna

Three and a half hours is a long time. Perhaps a lifetime for filmmakers to tell their stories convincingly, to explain their characters and help the viewers explore their characters’ black, white and grey shades. Three and a half hours is a luxury for storytellers vying for five minutes of reader attention. Having an entire nation (almost) concentrate on what you have written is a dream that rarely comes true. Well, storytellers whose stories get converted into films enjoy this privilege.
Then, why, may I ask, was Kabhi Alvida Na Keha, such a badly written and badly told story?
Was three and a half hours not enough for a director (who rather bizarrely claimed to have matured during its making!!!) to flesh out his characters, to make the audience believe that his point was (I suppose) not infidelity but true love found late, rather late? Was the story writer sleeping while penning down a romance that didn’t strike a chord.. that didn’t tug at any heart strings? It didn’t even evoke a sigh among the viewers.. for a love affair that was supposedly so passionate that it ended two marriages?
I, for one, did not see the lead pair fall in love, at all. I didn’t see the compelling factors that drew them to each other. You don’t need men and women dressed in blue and red and lilting music to convey that. The actors failed even the soulful Mitwa, their drab emoting a sad contrast to the brilliant score.
Mr Johar should know. He had Kajol crying in the rain in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and the theatre sobbed with her. In KANK, nobody cries. They are too busy looking at the watch, waiting for the movie to get over.
I would not blame the cold treatment to a supposed hot romantic true love found late story, on bad acting alone. The storyteller, I think, simply forgot to write scenes that showed how a much married man fell in love with another married woman. Remember SRK from the rather low-budget Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na coaxing you to fall in love with the girl he had a crush on.. his climbing a pole to get her scarf.. among many other stunts.
Yes, I know the film (KANK) was dealing with ``matured’’ people, but, for god’s sake, for all the jazz on maturity the only way the ``committed’’ man and woman think of working on their marriages is by pepping up their bedroom lives? I read somewhere the subject was sensitively handled. Yeah, sure.
Another unexplored angle, which could have perhaps added so much to the poorly etched characters, was how the married man (who was happiest at the birth of his child, we are told) had no lines on the dilemma he was facing choosing between true love and his child? And, a foul-tempered father hollering at his child was the supposed comic element in the film? What were you thinking, Mr Johar?
I am sure that the movie has already made enough profit for Mr Johar to plan his next venture. But, I for one, will stay out of SRK-K Johar films.
SRK has lost a fan of 20 years and Johar a viewer for his subsequent ventures. Goodbye.