Filmfare Editor-in-Chief Jitesh Pillaai shared his thoughts on Main Vaapas Aunga:
What do you do when you have a hard time liking a movie? You love the filmmaker so much that you want him to succeed at all costs. So, with a joy in my heart, I headed to the screening of Imtiaz Ali’s Main Vaapas Aaunga. What’s not to like about a film starring Naseeruddin Shah and Diljit Dosanjh?
Shah is extraordinary in his portrayal of an aging patriarch who longs to return to Sargodha, where he spent his youth and left his love behind due to Partition. Then there is his grandson played by Diljit, who apart from being a failed comedian, also quits his job.
He has a girlfriend waiting for him in London (Banita Sandhu, incredibly mediocre). Dosanjh is top class and you can see he is bringing life to the proceedings.
Vedang Raina is sincere and plays the young Shah with a lot of feeling. But he has a long way to go. He does a couple of sequences quite well, including the final train to India sequence. Sharvari looks fresh and dewy and the joys of youth are a sight to behold. It will be interesting to see how she performs as an actress in her future films.
Partition is a very serious topic. Trying to incorporate a love story into such a raw historical wound may or may not be an ideal scenario. If you see how Deepa Mehra’s Land, Pamela Rooks’s Train to Pakistan based on Khushwant Singh’s celebrated novel, or even Govind Nihalani’s excellent Tamas tackled the topic, you will feel that not enough research has been done here.
Ali is a sensitive and nuanced filmmaker, and while he manages to draw you into a somewhat clumsy love story, the parts of Partition don’t quite ring true. Main Vaapas Aaunga takes too long to establish the premise and the last twenty minutes are perhaps the strongest parts of the film.
But the very boring script, which tries to draw parallels between the present and the past, doesn’t really fit. AR Rahman’s music also doesn’t match the work he has done before in Ali’s films like Tamasha, Highway or Rockstar. Main Vaapas Aaunga is clumsy for its own good; Too many ideas intersect and too many things are accumulating.
A movie succeeds when you feel empathy for the characters. From time to time you do it. But most of the time the process moves at a glacial pace, which can be exhausting. Partition is an open wound, part of which has not yet healed. Even Diljit’s video at the end of the film, which is almost like an anti-war appeal and stands up for destitute children and war refugees, doesn’t quite fit and seems performative.
Main Vaapas Aaunga left me with mixed feelings. There is a lot to like and yet a lot could have been done with the material available. We get a kind of mockumentary interspersed with some interesting videos. Ali deserved better just like us.
Also Read: Vaapas Aaunga Top Review: A Poignant Yet Meandering Ode To Lifelong Love
