1.5 Stars (out of 4)
Watch Jab Khuli Kitaab on ZEE5
There’s something off about the structure of Jab Khuli Kitaab (“When the Book Opened‘). Actor and filmmaker Saurabh Shukla directs this movie version of his own play of the same name, but it doesn’t translate from stage to screen.
Gopal Nautiyal (Pankaj Kapur) has spent the last two years caring for his comatose wife Anusuya (Dimple Kapadia) in their house in picturesque Raniket, Uttarakhand. (Gorgeous scenery is the film’s best attribute). Their daughter and oldest son have returned home with their own families to say final goodbyes to Anusuya, who looks to be in her last days.
When the couple’s youngest son Dholu (Abuli Mamaji) — who has Down syndrome and lives with them — touches his mother’s face, she suddenly wakes. The family’s celebration is short-lived. Anusuya privately confesses to Gopal that their eldest son Param (Samir Soni) is the product of an affair. Gopal keeps the secret, but his bad mood rubs off on everyone.
Secretly, Gopal drives into town to find a lawyer. He’s waylaid by eager attorney RK Negi (Aparshakti Khurana), who is flummoxed by his new client. He can’t believe that Gopal wants to divorce his recently comatose wife for an affair she had fifty years ago.
I normally dislike when movies begin with a flashforward, but Gopal’s meeting with the lawyer is where Jab Khuli Kitaab should have started. The divorce is the film’s hook, so it makes sense to lead with it. Plus, Negi’s presence in the story would be more impactful as a framing device rather than just a guy who starts hanging around the family. His subplot about being in love with an unhappily married judge goes nowhere.
That’s the main issue with Jab Khuli Kitaab: it doesn’t have a destination in mind. Plotlines are unresolved, relationships are in flux, and the characters don’t seem to change or grow much through the course of the story.
It’s not to say that everything needs to be tidily wrapped up by the end, but the story just kind of floats there, directionless. The mix of tension and levity between and even within scenes is unbalanced. The film’s ending is abrupt and unsatisfying.
Given their experience and talent, Kapur and Kapadia create some compelling scenes together. Khurana’s comic relief character feels out of place, but that has more to do with story organization than his performance.
If the moral of the story is supposed to be “People are complicated,” well, yeah. That doesn’t make them interesting.
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