A film drenched in cigarette smoke and melancholic happiness. Characters feel like they could disappear at any time, entire places feel like hallucinations. Conversations lead to everywhere or nowhere. A strange feeling of knowing how the story will go yet knowing nothing at all. Feeling every emotion through the film yet feeling nothing at all. Being the best movie ever and also the worst. Roy has everything i love in film and also everything i dislike- it's simply one of the most frustrating films I've ever seen-yet i love it.
The film starts off as a a never ending road, an ever growing landscape, Vikramjit Singh took a canvas that never ends and painted his film but as the narrative progresses- i felt claustrophobic. The ever growing landscape felt reduced to a small hut. There's this unmatched atmosphere this film holds that hasn't left my mind ever since i saw it. aspects of this remind me of...David Lynch's Lost Highway? Bizzare comparison for a film that contains a song titled "Chittiyan Kaliyan" (translated = white wrists, problematic song yeah its like the worst part of the film), but no for real, this is downright haunting at times. The way it deals with love feels so special yet so dull- circling back to my point of the film doing everything right yet everything wrong.
I also can't get over how temporary every character feels, or how temporary everything feels, the entire film feels like it's set at the end of time, the end of world, despite not having that in its narrative or themes,it almost feels like a dystopian film at points- with empty beaches with only Ayesha and Roy walking on them- or empty pools for Ayesha and Kabir. The lack of extras in the Malaysia portion of the film helps the film establish its haunting environment alot.
Roy is kinda crazy. I still dont know if i give it a 5/10 or a 10/10 lol. If i were to describe it in one sentence it'd be, melancholia and adaptation's lovechild that's baptized in Bollywood water with a hint of fight club and lost highway . Honestly wish others get to see in this what i do because by god that 2.0/5 kills me a little inside
