EVERY other week, there are rumours on social media of Tabu and Shah Rukh Khan doing a film together. But it is more wishful thinking. The two actors have not acted together and that they have only teased with cameos so far heightens the excitement of seeing them collaborate. But there is something else too that drives this excitement: the (almost) lack of middle-aged romance in Hindi films. For long, love stories have been held hostage by the youth, so much so that at present it has reached a saturation point with nothing memorable being made in recent times (Sriram Raghavan’s swooning Merry Christmas is an exception). Neeraj Pandey’s Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha, a love story spread across two decades, intends to fill this gap but if anything, widens it. 

Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha, an excruciatingly bloated film, puts the slow in the slow burner. It takes the definition of timeless at face value and unfolds with little to no regard for time. Scenes keep going on unendingly, one song bleeds into another. One incident is depicted thrice and by the time one gets an inkling that it holds a kernel of mystery, the desire to watch it again dissipates. The actors look uninterested and by the time it feels like the film has lost its steam, it gathers some to offer more gratuitous details.

At all times, Pandey’s outing seeks to convey that the love story at hand is everlasting and immortal. The characters longingly look at each other, MM Keeravani’s songs (some hummable, some not) reinstate the theme and just in case one forgets, several dialogues in the film are expressly written to drive the point home. Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha opens with a trite, “Some parts of the film are true – the impossible parts”, it then goes into more excessive territory. When the two primary characters meet after long and someone asks who they are, their common friend replies, "Yeh upar wale ka imtihan hain (they are God’s exam)."

But it is all talk and little show in Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha, a film weighed down by its desire to be taken seriously. The year is 2001, the Bandra–Worli sea link is still unfinished (the bridge is the only signifier of time) and a young orphan, Krishna (Shantanu Maheshwari, the in-house smitten man, plays the younger version and Ajay Devgn, the older) and a college student, Vasudha (Saiee Manjrekar and Tabu) are springing into love. Their conversations are invigorating. She asks why people do not sleep when they are in love, and he answers that it's because they turn into owls. She asks: "What if someone divides us?" He replies: "I will burn the world." As you can see they don’t have much to talk about. But Krishna, otherwise a sweet guy, is obsessed with her. And she is obedient to a fault. One thing leads to another and Krishna is imprisoned for 25 years for killing two people. Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha is about the day Krishna is released, he meets Vasudha and their story is relayed in flashbacks. 

Pandey, who has helmed films like Special 26 and Baby in the past, is clearly out of depth here. This is his first foray into the genre and he overwhelms the narrative with artifice. Almost the whole film is shot in a set, lending it a dated aesthetic and the love story is reduced to two men deciding for a woman. That the person in question is Tabu, an actor who can move mountains if she chooses to, adds to the implausibility of it all. The filmmaker also attempts to recreate a Past Lives-like scene, where the woman stands with the ghost of her past while her present stares on. It is an incensed suggestion only made better by Jimmy Shergill (he plays Vasudha’s husband Abhijeet) who hijacks the moment just to have another drink. He is also the only actor who has fun among the heavy-handed turns of both Devgn and Tabu.

Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha wants to borrow the ache of Gulazar’s Ijaazat, inherit the thrill of Pandey’s homegrown ventures and showcase some of Devgn’s actioners where scenes are written just so that he can flash his machismo. It ends up resembling none of the above but just a long, overwrought tale that doesn’t know when to end. And what is a love story without timing? An unremarkable anecdote.

Read Also: Ulajh box office collection day 1: Janhvi Kapoor’s thriller gets a slow start with 1.10 cr