Kabir Singh Review: A Film So Vile, You’ll Taste Bile
Around 18 years from today, Misha and Zain Kapoor, now adults, might decide to watch their father’s films. They will somehow labour past the first 11 films (even Fida and Vivah). They’ll watch Jab We Met, Kaminey, and Paathshaala and be proud of their dad. They’ll dismiss Phata Poster Nikla Hero, R. Rajkumar, and Shaandaar as some mindless fun, and maybe have moist eyes when they watch Haider.
But soon after, they will arrive at Kabir Singh, after which the look of disgust and revulsion on their faces might have Shahid Kapoor concerned for their health. They might tell him that they’re experiencing a wave of nausea, which will make him think about what they ate last. Hopefully, he won’t chase his cook out of the house and the neighbourhood, because it won’t be his/her fault.
Misha and Zain would’ve just seen their father — with the sharp jawline, chiselled body, and carefully messed up hair typical of a Bollywood hero — play Kabir Singh, a man who attempts to rape a woman at knife-point before deciding against it.
They would then see him sexually harass his student, threaten to flash a subordinate at work, and constantly harangue his domestic helper — a woman far less privileged than him — before getting her banned from his apartment complex.
But this would be nothing compared to the other things Kabir Singh does once he sees Preeti Sikka (Kiara Advani) for the first time in college. He walks into a classroom full of boys and issues a fatwa declaring that Preeti is “his girl”, and they better not try to get close to her. Soon after, he kisses her without consent and turns her into a zoo animal, as everyone in college wants to get a glimpse of the girl who’s caught his eye.
A little background here: despite being an uncouth, violent, misogynistic, raving lunatic, Kabir Singh is the most popular student in his medical college because — surprise-surprise — he’s physically attractive and has a brilliant academic record. Misha and Zain will remark that this is the only authentic thing in the film.
But they might learn about #MeToo and ask how a year after the movement, their father played a character that seeks to control everything about the woman he “loves.” Kabir decides that Preeti should sit on the first bench in class and that she should be best friends with a “healthy chick” because she would be the perfect match for a pretty one like Preeti. He also commands her to wear her dupatta in an “appropriate” manner.
Unlike this author, Shahid Kapoor’s kids will have the privilege of being able to pause the film and go out for some air. But when they come back, they will be treated with Kabir Singh yelling, snapping, barking, and breaking plates for no apparent reason. They will see him rant, rage, and euphemise kissing with the sentence “we were in our personal space” and expect sane humans to understand him. And worse, they will see Kabir slapping the woman he “loves.”
Possibly numbed by all this, Misha and Zain will not be too affected by Kabir performing a surgery so drunk that he collapses midway, and later arguing that he could not possibly have been “medically negligent” since he guided the nurses to finish the surgery despite being hammered.
Because they (probably) love their father dearly, they will forgive him, but they will wonder the kind of mind this film comes from, as it seems to be made by someone who not only doesn’t know how cinema works, but also has no idea how human beings behave.
They might notice that in this three-hour “love story”, there are only two or three instances of the couple actually talking to each other. Any scene in which they’re supposedly talking has typically emo Bollywood music playing over the conversation, probably because the film’s maker (Sandeep Vanga) has no idea how men and women talk to each other.
If they wanted to delve deeper, Misha and Zain, will make a connection between the nonsensical verbal diarrhoea Kabir resorts to and the diarrhoeal nature of the film, which plays out like the rant of a moronic, narcissistic madman who has never read a book, watched a film, or even heard an opinion other than his own.
If their upbringing in tinsel town has encouraged the young Kapoors to read about filmmaking, they will find that Vanga does not understand the concept of foreshadowing, character development, or transitions. If not, they will find him lacking an understanding of Indian society, human language, and logic.
Each character effortlessly speaks Hindi, English, and Punjabi, while Kabir spends the first half talking like a Delhi boy before becoming a typical Mumbaikar. Characters say and do things without any emotional prelude or conviction.
Misha and Zain will realise that their father, though culpable for this monstrosity, plays a character that is merely a vessel for Vanga to voice his deeply misogynistic, regressive, convoluted, hare-brained, hypocritical, and idiotic views on society.
Kabir, a supposedly brilliant man actually believes that caste was not a factor in marriage in his grandparents’ time. At the same time, he looks back at medieval times as ideal, for he thinks he would’ve been king and had no trouble marrying Preeti. He acts like the most selfless lover in the world but tells Preeti that she’s nothing if not “his girl.”
He has supposedly modern views but believes that a man agreeing to marry a woman who has slept with someone else has no “self-respect.” He’s supposed to be “brilliant”, but is too stupid to get that if his lawyer grills him about the thing he’s accused of, then he’s doing a pretty good job.
Instead of learning a little bit about human beings and society, Vanga gives us 50 shots of Shahid Kapoor lighting a cigarette like a juvenile college kid who still thinks it looks cool.
What Misha and Zain Kapoor won’t be privy to, though, is the response this film got from the audience of a premium multiplex in a posh South Delhi suburb. Hoots, laughs, and claps wouldn’t stop among a primarily male audience that had lined up to watch Kabir Singh at 9:30 am on a weekday, proving that their father, Vanga, and the film’s producers knew exactly what they were doing when they decided to make this film.
