Clearly of the best films I’ve seen this year, Vishal Bhardwaj’s 7 Khoon Maaf — the brilliant cinematic adaptation of Ruskin Bond’s short story Susanna’s Seven Husbands — is a gripping story of one woman’s tragic black humour sojourn with seven men. But more than that, it is equally an exaggerated insight into what different women could be facing in this world of men. I could go on about the great cinematography and editing, acting and direction, music and ambience, but right now I’ll just stick to religion.
Broadly, this is a story about how Susanna Anna-Marie Johannes, an Anglo-Indian girl in her twenties grows into her sixties, leaving a trail of six dead husbands (the seventh is a mystery in the climax) behind. No, I’m not playing the plot spoiler — Vishal Bhardwajtells this to you in the first 10 minutes of the film. Like a good suspense film, the plot is revealed upfront to the audience, who looks at how it plays out.
Of the six dead husbands, we have three Christians, one Muslim and two Hindus. To say that the film delivers communal harmony would not be wrong. But bring the plot in and it turns this harmony on its head — all six dead men “deserved to die” according to Priyanka Chopra who in my opinion has delivered her best performance so far, better than Kaminay.
If one was a typical insecure Indian husband and another a sado-masochist, she has to murder the lustful and wealth-seeking opportunists as well as the cheats. Religious diversity, I feel, was introduced to give the six characters their unique signatures. All of them — from Neil Nitin Mukesh as Major Edwin Rodrigues (Christian), John Abraham as Jimmy Stetson (Christian) and Irrfan Khan as Wasiullah Khan a.k.a. Musafir (Muslim) to Aleksandr Dyachenko as Nicolai Vronsky (Christian), Annu Kapoor as Keemat Lal (Hindu) and Naseeruddin Shah as Dr. Modhusudhon Tarafdar (more a spiritual person than a Hindu) — bring with them some element of darkness that we men carry.
To that extent, the film binds the black and grey sides of all men, capturing religious diversity on the way. It’s more a portrayal of disharmonies of men rather than harmonies across faiths, keeping religion as a platform. But even while attempting it, the film misses out on some typically Indian religions — Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Parsees — all of which have interesting idiosyncrasies that characters could play out.
Book your tickets right now and go see this film.
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