Kabeer Singh’(Shahid Kapoor) is a CET rank holder, qualified surgeon and the son of a wealthy family in Delhi who watches his world blooming with richly scented buds when he finds himself besotted by a fair nymph from his college ( Kyra Advani). Enwrapped under fire of love and a maze of singular desire he finds himself diving into a bedlam of opposition: parental, peers and himself!
Bashing up unwanted suitors to mangled pulp and defying hostel rules laid out for the male-female divides, ‘Kabeer Singh’ is soon shocked into disbelief when his beloved is mercilessly torn apart from his bosom to get married off to ‘more suitable-suitors’. Thus begins, the downward spiral of his life and what we witness is the film borrowing ideas from ‘Devdas’ (an immortal film from another era).
Unlike the drunken, yet, thoughtful stupors of ‘Devdas’ –the grieving rant of ‘Kabeer Singh’ shocks the innards of the viewer.
Nursing a broken heart, he soon sinks into a black- holed abyss filled with sorrowful pangs from the killing fumes of nicotine and destructive sips of alcohol. When Kabeer drinks he puts it straight up with weed as an accompaniment! The fine print plastered permanently on the demerits of smoking and drinking at the bottom of the screen is gigantically obscured by the impressively shocking histrionics of Shahid Kapoor ; a cigarette is lighted and inhaled so deep that it cuts across the screen to enter your lungs; neat pegs of large whiskey swallowed mercilessly that make you pause for breath; an overdose of self-injected drug brings him, and you, to dive off the ledge of a cliff .
Shahid Kapoor in the title role of the brokenhearted, hard-drinking ‘Kabeer Singh’ shines forth cinematically, as the brightest performer of the year. In a role that calls for uncouth language, dilapidated behavior, shabby outlook riding high on the backs of unbridled vices of life- indeed, it is the depth of his performance that shocks you into submission.
My only grouse is when the script, awards ‘Kabeer Singh’ an unbelievably shocking cinematic finale to his grief. As the happiness induced climax ends, I hear the loud snapping of my two-and-half-hours ties with him. An ending, that could have shined and perhaps been debated as a banal copy of Sarat Chandra’s classic, soon develops cold feet to vapourize after a sizzling downpour. However, notwithstanding my aspersions, what remains embedded is the bearded visage of ‘Kabeer Singh’ punishing his body to train his mind in erasing those moments of love.
It’s June 2019, people all around the globe are celebrating the pride month, Taylor Swift who always has been reluctant to be political through her songs finally set the record straight on her support for the LGBTQ community with her latest single and also reconciled with her long-time frenemy Katy Perry, cheers to women coming together.
But to great surprise back home in India, a frustrating film about toxic masculinity and biased conventional femininity titled Kabir Singh released with surging crowds, cheering and clapping for a short-tempered protagonist that shouldn’t even, with all those regressive and self-destructive attributes be a protagonist.
There’s a narrative of two people who don’t understand consent, a dude that gets away with his anger triggered deeds because to state it the way it is, he’s a guy, he’s brash and rouge.
The girl is named Preeti Sikka, she’s pretty, yes, also she is like a coin as Sikka translates into English. She has two sides and a fixed value. It’s flabbergasting to see somebody write such a one dimensional, hopeless female character when they need to be strongly written the most.
Shahid Kapoor in his attempt to breathe life to Kabir is absolutely a winner but that’s a win for no cause, all it defeats is the attempts of several notable people of the society who are trying to educate a male chauvinist majority that women are not just objects or puppets that will function the way they want them to.
Kabir is a very flawed character, annoying and absurd, and it was shocking to witness my fellow audience scream in applaud, it was a shocking reflection of the shallow, shrewd mentality that people still are dwelling with.
I have no qualms with a flawed character, we saw one in Fashion, that was Sonali Gujral, a sensational, successful supermodel, was an alcoholic and most of the time high on drugs, she was harsh and too proud, however when we go into the details of her background we understand she uses all that as a defense mechanism, to save herself from notorious people in the industry, from the prying paparazzi and abusive partners. But Kabir here is privileged, he comes from a rich family and does everything because he thinks he can do. And that’s problematic, his character doesn’t need that kind of attention, forget glorification. But all of that happens in the movie, throughout, to the point, I started feeling suffocated.
There are a few tender moments of love but don’t get my heart beating faster because I know the very foundation of that relationship. Kabir Singh is all about the extreme, like a bucket overflowing with water with the tap still running, we don’t need that, close that tap, we had enough exploitation already
