Andhadhun Analysis
We see a blind rabbit. We see a farmer with a gun. We see the farmer track the rabbit. We see the rabbit run away. We see the farmer run, slip, get back on his feet and chase the rabbit. We hear a gunshot. We see the Film’s Title come up on the screen. Andhadhun.
The opening of the plot is a microcosm of the story we will see unfold before us. This scene that we see near the beginning of the plot, takes place, as we will find out, near the end of the story. An homage to the time structure in the narrative form of pulp fiction - a broken timeline. Further, there are clear parallels in the narrative to this scene. It is a game of cat and mouse between the farmer and the rabbit just like the game of cat and mouse between Akash and Simi, or Akash and Inspector Manohar, or Akash and Dr Swami, or Dr Swami and Simi, or Inspector Manohar and Murli or any other out of the tons in the film. The rabbit is blind which could represent Akash pretending to be blind or Akash being blind or any of the other characters being mentally blinded by greed, rage or lust. The film’s title is a stylistically similar homage to the titles of Indian films of the ’70s. The title is a play on the words Andha, Dhun and Andhadhund. Andha means a blind person, Dhun means Tune, and Andhadhund means doing something in a blind rage, indiscriminately, rashly, without being discerning, being blind to the consequences and so on. The title’s literal translation would then be A Blind Tune. The title aptly describes the art created by our main character, Akash, who is a blind man playing the piano. Taking the wordplay into account, it can also aptly describe the story events — a ballad of people doing things indiscriminately while being blinded to the consequences of their actions by lust, greed, rage and self-preservation. Hence, the opening few minutes of the plot show us that this is a film which uses intertextual references to pay homage to the influences on the director’s filmmaking, and to provide commentary on the characters and events in the story.
In an interview, Sriram Raghavan, the director of Andhadhun, tells us that he is influenced by Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, Jean Luc Goddard, Vijay Anand, Film Noir, and Indian Cinema of the 1960s — 1980’s especially pulp and B movies.[1] However even if we had no idea of these influences before watching Andhadhun, we could, from the numerous intertextual references in the movie, create a list that would be extremely close if not exactly similar.
A few minutes into the film we see a montage of shots. The montage shows us a man walking from outside a building into his house. We see him enter his house and walk through the hallways. We then see him open a door and we are introduced to a woman behind it. This whole montage is accompanied by a song playing in the background that we assume to be part of the musical score. Hence we assume that the music playing is non-diegetic. However, the next shot tells us completely the opposite. In the shot we see a man singing the same song that we assumed was the non-diegetic score. The man is a new character and the mise en scene suggests that he is spatially in a different location. We now assume that the sound is in fact diegetic but occurring in a spatially different location. In the next few shots, however, the filmmaker pulls the rug from under us. The camera tracks back and whip pans to reveal the same character we had seen in the montage sitting and watching a youtube equivalent. The character is watching a video of the song we thought was part of the non-diegetic score. The new character who was singing in a different spatial location was inside that video. So now, in complete contrast to our initial assumptions, we find out that the sound was diegetic, occurring in the same space but ahead in story time. The music we thought was the score was an example of non-simultaneous sound from ahead in the story. It was a sonic flashforward/sound bridge. Right off the bat, the film plays with our expectations and classifications of diegetic and non-diegetic sound and uses a sonic flashforward/sound bridge. These choices in film style are paying homage to Jean Luc Godard. Godard loved to stress the conventionality of traditional sound usage.² In his film Contempt, for instance, he used a sonic flashforward.² There are numerous more homages to Godard throughout the film. We see an homage in film style as Akash and Sophie, a man and a woman, ride a scooter towards their destination. We see the editing and cinematography combine to produce multiple jump cuts. This scene draws parallels and clearly pays homage to one of the very first examples of jump cuts which occurred in Godard’s Breathless. The jump cuts in Breathless also took place when a man and woman are riding in a vehicle.
The richness of the intertextuality in our original scene doesn’t stop with the homage to Godard. The character we see in the montage and we see singing the song on the youtube equivalent is Pramod Sinha. Pramod Sinha is a 70’s B movie Film Star in this film. The actor who plays him is Anil Dhawan, himself a B and pulp movie Film Star in India. The song being sung by Pramod Sinha in the youtube equivalent video is actually a popular song from an Anil Dhawan movie. The intertextuality continues in the next shot, where we see Pramod Sinha read out a comment on his video which has been written by a person from Denmark. Pramod Sinha’s wife Simi, played by the actress Tabu, asks him “Yeh Hamlet bhi wahi ka tha na?”(Wasn’t Hamlet from Denmark also?). Later in the film, Simi is referred to as Lady Macbeth. Both these Shakespearean references towards Simi hold a deeper meaning. Tabu, the actress who plays Simi, has acted in two hugely successful Shakespeare adaptations in Indian Cinema, Haider and Maqbool. Haider and Maqbool are adaptations of Hamlet and Macbeth respectively. Tabu played Lady Macbeth in Maqbool and played Gertrude in Haider. The references to these Tabu performances are an homage to Shakespeare but also serve as a commentary on Tabu’s character in the story. Simi is ruthless, cold, manipulative, cunning and self-preserving but also loving and affectionate in her twisted way. These traits are a mixture of Lady Macbeth’s and Gertrude’s. Simi’s name could also be an intertextual reference to the name of the actress who played Kamini, a wife who murders her husband, in Subash Ghai’s Karz, Simi Garewal.
The next few scenes of the film develop an interesting dynamic. Akash, the pianist that the audience and characters assumed to be blind, is revealed to not be blind. This reveal however is only for the audience. The reveal takes place through unrestricted and objective narration from the camera. No other character, except a suspicious kid from the neighborhood, knows what we as the audience know. This makes the dynamic such that Akash can see every other character but no one is aware that they are being observed. This theme is extremely common in the works of Alfred Hitchcock.³ In Vertigo, James Stewart’s character observes Kim Novak’s character without her being aware of being observed. In Rear Window we see James Stewart’s character observing all his neighbors without them being aware that they are being observed. Akash here is in the same position as both the James Stewart characters.
After creating this dynamic the film moves into what is arguably the best part of the entire film. Akash is invited to play the piano at Pramod Sinha’s house. Akash reaches the house and is invited in by Simi. We see Akash go and sit at the piano. We see him start to play and then he sees something and abruptly stops. Up till now the narration has been fairly unrestricted and objective, we have known more than any of the characters. The narrative style is flipped on its head in this scene. As Akash stops, the camera cuts to a POV shot from his perspective. We see a pair of legs, red liquid on the floor and a broken wine bottle. The narrative throughout this scene restricts us to knowledge that only Akash has. We get to know that there is a dead person in the house only when Akash gets to know that there is a dead person in the house. We know that there is another different character in the house only when Akash gets to know. We get perceptual subjectivity in narration through the use of POV shots and mental subjectivity in narration through a flashback in Akash’s imagination. Even more importantly, most of this scene comprises of Akash sitting behind and playing the piano while seeing what happens around him. He sees what happens around him through POV shots, over the shoulder shots and eyeline matches, restricting us to his perspective. These shots are framed such that the piano and its lid form a window through which Akash sees the events occurring in the house. The dead person is Pramod Sinha and the scene’s second half consists of us being locked in Akash’s POV as Simi disposes of her husband’s body. So, in this scene, the narration is restricted & subjective, we are confined to the main characters POV, and we see a spouse getting rid of her partner’s body through a window-like frame. Does that sound familiar? The familiarity in this scene is purposeful. The whole scene is a clear homage to Hitchcock’s Rear Window, both in film style and narrative form.
The homages to Hitchcock don’t stop here. As pointed out earlier, the narration in the film had been, up to this point, unrestricted and objective. We know more than any of the characters. The fact that we know Akash is not blind and the characters don’t is used to create suspense throughout the first half of the film. Will Akash act on what he has seen? Will Simi get to know that Akash is not blind? Will all hell break loose when other characters find out he is not blind? Giving the audience more information through unrestricted narration is a style of narrative form for creating suspense pioneered by Alfred Hitchcock. He popularized this through the bomb under the table analogy.⁴ Andhadhun is an example in the usage of the principle behind this analogy. Hitchcock explains :-
“We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, Boom! There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock, and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions this innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There’s a bomb beneath you and it’s about to explode!” ⁴
Further, in the film’s second half there is a scene where a character is climbing the stairs of an abandoned building. The camera looks down on him as he climbs up and tracks backward while rotating slowly. It is a cinematography technique that was created by Hitchcock and used for the first time in Vertigo.⁵
The imagined flashback that provided mental subjectivity in this scene has even more intertextual references in the shape of songs. While inviting Akash to his house, Pramod had asked him to play songs that Rajesh Khanna was in. Rajesh Khanna was one of the most popular film stars in Indian Cinema during the ’70s. In the flashback, as Akash imagines Pramod returning home to find his wife being unfaithful, the musical score is playing a piano cover of Rajesh Khanna’s famous song Yeh Jo Mohabbat Hai (This thing called love). This song is a declaration by a man that he will not love, for love is extremely brutal. Further commentary is provided from even more intertextual song references like the song that plays during Pramod’s funeral, Yeh Jeevan Hai . That song is a song about a man looking back at his life. It is also incidentally a song from an Anil Dhawan film. Both these songs were sung by Kishore Kumar during the ’70s. Kishore Kumar is a legendary playback singer (A playback singer is an artist who provides the voice for an actor when the actor has to sing on screen) in Indian Cinema. Taking the homage in sound a step further is the first song that Akash sings Naina Da Kya Kasoor. The song is an homage to a famous song, O mere sona re, from the Vijay Anand film Teesri Manzil (The third floor). Both songs are similar in tempo and have the same style of lyrical repetition in them. The song that is being payed homage to talks about never leaving your golden love and Akash sings his first song when he meets his love interest in the film. The commentary is unmistakable. The homage to the cinema of those decades quite clear.
The Film nears its end with Akash playing piano as a part of an ensemble. The ensemble is named the Aznavour ensemble. This is a clear homage to Charles Aznavour and Francois Truffaut. Charles Aznavour was the lead actor in Francis Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, plenty of people tried doing that in Andhadhun. Andhadhun draws inspiration from the short film L’accordeur which is in turn inspired by Shoot the Piano Player. Transitive.
The film has so many more throwaway references that I could keep on writing indefinitely. In finite time and space I’ll try to list a few more. The reference to Sholay when a blinded Akash says Itna sanata kyun hai bhai? (Why is there so much silence?) an exact quote of the Blind Imam’s heart wrenching question. The mask from Scream. References to the radio and TV show Chitrahar and Chayageet. References to Agent Vinod, Singham, Hum dil de Chuke Sanam, Darwaza, Annadatta and so on.
This film ends as we track Akash walking towards an unknown destination. Before setting out Akash told a labyrinthine story to Sophie. The story was about pretending to be blind, then being actually blinded and then finding a way to get his sight back but not choosing to take it for the sake of his morality. However, all is not as it seems. We then see Akash walking towards an unknown destination with a cane swinging left to right to guide him. We see him come up to an empty can lying on the road. We see him swing the cane premeditatedly and hit the can, the camera pans towards the can and the film ends. Is Akash blind or not? To summarize: The film has an ambiguous ending with a man walking towards an unknown destination somewhere in Europe. Sounds Familiar? It is an homage to Truffaut’s 400 blows. Akash, Antoine and Ambiguity lead us to the end of Andhadhun.
Throughout I’ve told you we see, but do we really see? Do we see the scene or do we see the intertextuality in the scene? Do we see the narrative or do we see the commentary on it provided by the intertextuality? We are Akash. We have the same dilemma. Do we see or do we not, isn’t that the question?
Bibliography
[5] Tucker, P. (2019). Secrets of screen directing: the tricks of the trade. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
[4] Truffaut, F., Hitchcock, A., & Scott, H. G. (2017). Hitchcock. London: Faber & Faber.
[3] Ebert, R. (n.d.). Movie reviews and ratings by Film Critic Roger Ebert: Roger Ebert. Retrieved from https://www.rogerebert.com
[2] Bordwell, D., Thompson, K., & Smith, J. (2017). Film art: an introduction. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
[1] YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/?gl=GB&hl=en-GB.
Original Picture Sources: Wikipedia and Cinemashock
