When a film begins with all dark (unclear) night sequences in its opening minutes, then it largely hampers the spirit, particularly for the general public not there to witness any deliberately made so called ‘piece of art’. Moreover when in a 132 minutes film entirely depending upon its female star’s face value and popularity, if the lady is still not there even till the initial 45 minutes then you do feel irritated and cheated too as a viewer willing to witness a great romantic film with an interesting cast.
Yes, being based on the famous classic “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens, a good part of the film does deal with the childhood of its leading couple. But sadly, its this part of the movie only which makes you feel restless and annoyed waiting for the colourful FITOOR to happen on screen as promised. As a result, all you get before intermission is some good soothing music, a supportive background score, many colourful frames, impressive lighting, eye catching costumes and nothing else to be precise including the beautiful Katrina.
Post intermission the film becomes a usual, repetitive love-saga with its every next sequence and the director Abhishek Kapoor arrogantly refuses to pick up the pace for his own reasons. In fact it will be quite enlightening to know about the director’s hidden vision in some ‘post-release interview’ as there is neither any intense love nor madness in his film simply wasting the chosen title FITOOR. Probably he felt putting the reference of Kashmir, Delhi and Pakistan along with the backdrop of art will do the trick. But on the contrary, it’s these forcibly added elements only that eventually make the film look like a highly confused product where people keep behaving weirdly and even a known painter suddenly becomes a sculptor towards the end without any given reasoning.
In short, FITOOR doesn’t seem to be a film from the director of ROCK ON and KAI PO CHE from any angle and appears to be a vaguely conceived project; where in the man behind the microphone is desperately willing to portray himself as someone highly artistic following the footsteps of names such as Sanjay Leela Bhansali. May be that is the reason you find detailed creative frames, fixed colour-schemes, experimental music and inspirations taken from a classic book of the World literature too just like Bhansali. However in the process director Abhishek Kapoor shockingly forgets to work on his basic script and doesn’t even realize that his chosen lead pair is not enjoying or displaying any kind of passionate-loving chemistry on screen as essentially required by the particular subject. Here keeping in mind the reported casting issues, its quite possible that Abhishek got forced to adjust with the limited options given, since even Tabu was the second (or may be third) choice for the film after Rekha walked out of the same due to some undisclosed reasons.
Anyway, with FITOOR, Abhishek comes up with a romantic film having no burning passion or fanatical love between its main protagonists Aditya and Katrina, who keep performing with the similar stone-like expressions without any major variations. The film has no supporting act providing the occasional push to the otherwise boring story progression including the most important role enacted by Tabu and other played by Lara Dutta, Aditi Rao Hydari, Ajay Devgun, Rahul Bhatt and more. Plus though the film does have a fine original soundtrack in both technical & musical terms, but that is not going to impress everyone unanimously, missing the typical mass appeal required for a Hindi film’s romantic score with a few catchy melodies. Still, mentioning an exclusive feature of Amit Trivedi’s appreciable music, it’s his (minimal) musical arrangement, the sound quality and choice of instruments that always make a much more solid impact than the main melodies of his compositions, as I have repeatedly felt.
In all FITOOR has an appreciable cinematography, eye catching art-direction and an interesting soundtrack too. But nothing in terms of storyline, performances and obsessive love to offer in return of your time and money spent. In more harsh words, we have earlier seen much better, intense, deep and insane 'Fitoor' in Hindi love stories made decades back.
Rating : 1.5 / 5
