Jaon Kaha Bata Ae Dil – A Netflix Film – a review, an analysis

‘Jaoon Kaha Bata Ae Dil’ has a voice of its own, it has a commentary on anything and everything.

When the film began, I thought this must be a mockery on romance which Hindi films generally depicts but it isn’t that only. It is about two working class couple meeting for an after-work date. They meet at Marine Drive but doesn’t talk about love they have for each other but talks about anything and everything which all makes sense when you listen to them. The film moves into different spaces – from Marine Drive to Taxi, from Taxi to a local Café, from Café to a beach, from Beach to a Hotel Room and has long one take shots to build the engagement. These spaces help us to know how their love is decaying for each other.

Both the pivotal characters are not named maybe to show they are just the ordinary ones and doesn’t require a specific identity. The conversation which we hear either between the couple, or the man and the taxi driver has a social commentary which could be heard on road, in a bus or in a local train which we are familiar with. There is a certain kind of humor that works out – like the scene where a taxi driver tries to remember one of Salman Khan’s film name, and abuses Salman Khan’s films boldly without any hesitation.

The film transits into its third act when it moves its space into a hotel room. That scene might not work for some people and may say that the girl was too submissive to his ways. But, as the film title suggests the female protagonist has nowhere else to go to seek love. She has a complex which has been built inside her because of her looks and somehow the male protagonist who’s just an ordinary person for the world but think is extraordinary uses her complex in his favor.

There’s an abstract bittersweet ending which again symbolizes that these two have no where to go to seek what they want. They’ll end up with each other. The film worked for me for most of the parts. It was the first film in the whole line up of my day which got five times audience applause, and only film where no one walked out of it till the time it ended.

The film might have left some of the audience in a topsy-turvy situation with the later one-third of the film, but I haven’t seen a Hindi language film being so outspoken about political parties, moral policing groups, freedom of expression, mirage of love that films have created, & abusive relationships. Though there is an abrupt route which the film takes but still it has the courage to take that route.

This film can disturb and distraught some of the audience but still it deserves all the applause which it earned during the screenings.