Fitoor

If you didn’t know it was Dickens, would you find Fitoor acceptable as an unrequited love story? A poor boy in Kashmir worships a snooty, aristocratic girl in the Valley. She has a mother who is obsessed, to the level of perversity, with the idea that a broken heart is part of falling in love. Begum Hazrat (Tabu) tells young Noor (Aditya Roy Kapur), every time she meets him, that he must endure the tragic effects of love, just as she herself has all these sad years. But the boy doesn’t listen as he has great expectations of himself. He grows up to be a fine painter, recording on his canvas the seasons, the people and the political tragedy of his homeland.

In the heady art world of New Delhi, he meets the little Kashmiri girl he was once in love with. Firdaus (Katrina Kaif) is now a woman about town, dabbling in art, politics and interesting men. She has an affair with Noor and then moves on, asking him to do the same; telling him that this is the way the world is—people ‘progress’ in their personal and professional lives. The best part about the film is the quality of dialogues and the content of the conversations. The characters, particularly Begum Hazrat, often use beautiful metaphors to express themselves and conduct their affairs with an old world mannerism that is striking, especially when spoken in the go-getting ambience of Delhi. In one dramatic scene, Begum Hazrat descends on an art show dressed in an extravagant gown, passes her judgement on the art on display, and then exits, all in one fell swoop.

It is a slow moving film that refers to the politics in Kashmir but does not engage with it. Had it done so, even with a fraction of the intensity that Haider did, the story would have been more absorbing. The love affair between Noor and Firdaus does not even touch upon the very real social division between them. The class divide was the essence of the world of Dickens. Why adapt his novel and then erase the subject?

About The Author

Ajit Duara