‘7 Khoon Maaf’: a wicked riff on romance - Movie Review
February 19, 2011
Starring Priyanka Chopra, Neil Nitin Mukesh, John Abraham, Irrfan Khan, Aleksandr Dyachenko, Annu Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah, Vivaan Shah
Director Vishal Bhardwaj—best known for his stellar Shakespeare adaptations Maqbool (2003) and Omkara (2006)—turns to literature once again—this time, Ruskin Bond's short story Susanna's Seven Husbands—for his latest film, 7 Khoon Maaf. While the basis for his films often come from elsewhere, Bhardwaj is one of the most original Hindi filmmakers today, and he outdoes himself once again with 7 Khoon Maaf.
Bhardwaj frequently takes commercial actors and shows audiences a very different, artistic side of them. He consistently brings out the best in his performers. Sometimes, it's merely his inspired casting that makes actors look good. Either way, it would behoove big-time stars to clamor for even small roles in his films. Priyanka Chopra has been his biggest beneficiary. A beauty queen-turned-actress, she could have gone the run-of-the-mill route of so many others like her, but her performances here and in Bhardwaj's previous film Kaminey (2009) have made her the far-and-away standout of Bollywood's belles du jour.
In 7 Khoon Maaf, Chopra plays Susanna, a Black Widow who's like a cross between Dickens' Miss Havisham and the terrible goddess Kali. Susanna is a wealthy orphan, who lives in a creepy Gothic house with a bunch of creepy loyal servants, and she marries and buries her husbands in an old Catholic church. From the very start, she's odd, as the rich and lonely tend to be, and her eccentricities include keeping venomous snakes as pets. She gets married seven times, killing off each of her husbands. While their deaths appear accidental, the police start to suspect her, but there's no evidence to pin the murders on her—and the local constable has the hots for her.
At its core, the film is a traditional heroine-driven romance: despite disappointments, the plucky Susanna never gives up searching for true love. But every man to whom she gives her heart fails her in spectacular fashion—and that's where the film spins out, darkly, from the formula. The men use her, abuse her, cheat on her, and crush her spirit. One tries to kill her, another begs to be her victim. She doesn't need to kill any of them to escape—she has the means to leave them—but she kills them for purgation. The murders never liberate her, however. More than the serial killings, more than the pain she suffers, it's her stubborn belief in love in the face of all evidence to the contrary that makes her increasingly insane.
Her first marriage is to Major Edwin Rodriques (Neil Nitin Mukesh), a jealous control freak who blinds one of her beloved servants—and therefore must be punished. Next, she marries Jimmy Stetson (John Abraham), a clean-cut choir boy-turned-grungy rocker who ends up addicted to drugs. The comical, campy episode with Jimmy is one of the film's best, as is her marriage to Kashmiri poet Wasiullah Khan (Irrfan Khan). Khan's graceful physicality dominates every frame he's in, and he glides like a skater from suave romantic to brutish deviant—his violence is as measured as his verse. She later marries Russian nuclear scientist Nicolai Vronsky (played by Aleksandr Dyachenko, a James Bond-looking villain if ever there was one), with whom she reenacts her own twisted version of Anna Karenina.
While the first half is episodic, the second half has a much more compelling and unpredictable structure. The story's narrator—Susanna's ward Arun (played by Vivaan Shah, the real-life son of actor Naseeruddin Shah, who plays Susanna's sixth husband)—interestingly emerges from the background as he grows up and he becomes integral to the plot. The unexpected ending is perversely perfect.
7 Khoon Maaf is rated Must See.
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