In direct contrast to his last film Kaminey , when Vishal Bhardwaj was in no hurry to explain what was going on, fully confident that his audience was smart enough to figure it all out in due course , 7 Khoon Maaf , right from its title, is all about spelling it out.
It's one thing to have a tribute reference as a clue hidden in the frame, waiting to be caught by the truly observant and another to spoon-feed you with a close-up — be it Leo Tolstoy's “Anna Karenina” or The Seven Wives of Bluebeard by Anatole France.
If the Vronsky episode is a reference to the Tolstoy novel (she jokes to the Russian guy that if he's Vronsky, she's Anna and is later shown reading the novel), the core idea of serially killing the spouse has echoes of Bluebeard killing his wives after they stumble upon his dark secret.
In the 15th Century, when divorce was unheard of, killing the spouse does seem like the only way-out. Here, since Bhardwaj is keen on reminding us about the season of each murder giving away the period it is set in, we can't help but wonder why didn't she consider divorce if she also considered saving her marriage every time? The changing of husbands coincide with landmark events — from Babri Masjid demolition to India's nuclear tests to the New Year's eve Kandahar hijack episode to the recent attack on the Taj in Mumbai as Bhardwaj stacks up weddings and funerals, next to each other, more for effect than depth.
7 Khoon Maaf turns out to be a gimmick film, one where we are supposed to count along and keep track of the body count. Four more to go, as the interval slate announces.
Considering that it was adapted from Ruskin Bond's short story, it's obvious that the filmmaker has let himself down with the screenwriting. Fashioned like a legend you hear about, never certain of actual facts, the film decides not to flesh out how she fell in love giving us just a vague hint about her choice of husbands.
The first one's a good-looking army man but turns out to be a jealous, bitter, impotent lover with a sadistic streak. There's a ridiculous whip-fight between a short man and the one-legged Major (Neil Nitin Mukesh) to showcase his evilness but plays out like a comic duel between disabilities. The army man's type is represented by a gun by Sussanna's team of psycho killers later in the film.
The next husband, a passionate musician (John Abraham), she meets at the funeral of her first husband, turns out to be a plagiarising, cross-dressing, coke-head who refuses to reform even after rehab.
Within the first two husbands, Bhardwaj runs out of ideas. The next one is a sensitive poet (Irrfan Khan), but a sexual deviant. He's represented by a sculpted bust. Soon after that, the filmmaker lets go of this need to represent every type with a statuette, probably not finding the right signifier.
The charming Russian ambassador (Aleksandr Dyachenko) turns out to be a spy, the policeman investigating the murders, Keemat Lal (Annu Kapoor) turns out to be the price (Keemat) she has to pay for her sins and her life saving angel (Naseeruddin Shah) too turns out sinister.
While Annu Kapoor, Irrfan and Naseeruddin Shah make their episodes work, Vivaan Shah (Naseeruddin Shah's son making a debut) holds the whole film together, playing the narrator, while Priyanka Chopra churns out a rather uneven, inconsistent performance that's further botched up by bad make-up.
Despite the odd moment that makes you smile, the only reason you want to stay till the end is to figure out who the seventh husband is and to check if the film's title is mathematically accurate.
But for ‘Darling' and ‘O Mama', even the music is a huge letdown by Vishal Bhardwaj, with the composer borrowing from a Russian folk song and a part of the background score for a ballet sequence is blatantly ripped off from the Cuban tango sequence in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot .
Keeping in mind his impressive filmography, just forgive and forget.
7 Khoon Maaf
Genre: Thriller
Director: Vishal Bhardwaj
Cast: Priyanka Chopra, Vivaan Shah, Neil Nitin Mukesh, John Abraham, Irrfan Khan, Annu Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah, Aleksandr Dyachenko
Storyline: Unlucky in love, Susanna kills every man she's married to because where she lives, no one's ever heard of divorce.
Bottomline: Vishal Bhardwaj's weakest film till date, devoid of depth, quirk, humour or twist
