Freelance photographer Ray Acharya (Neil Nitin Mukesh), the hero of Aa Dekhen Zara
(2009), is having a very bad week. Money is short, his camera has been
stolen, the neighborhood children are laughing at his antiquated
motorcycle, and worst of all, his beloved grandfather, an eccentric
inventor, has died. As his grandfather’s dour lawyer explains, the old
man was deeply in debt, and has left Ray with nothing but memories . . .
and a series of clues leading to his greatest invention, a camera which
can take pictures of the future!
The film makes no attempt at all to explain how the camera is supposed to work; it’s SCIENCE, but it may as well be magic. Through a combination of exposition and trial and error, Ray quickly discovers the rules governing the camera’s use; it will only photograph the future, you can only take one picture of a person or object on a particular day, and a blank picture means that the subject is going to die.
Ray also quickly discovers that while the future depicted in the photographs is open to interpretation, it cannot be changed. (Impressively, the movie actually establishes this rule, and then sticks to it; everything depicted in the photographs comes to pass.) Happily, while discovering this, he makes the acquaintance of the woman in the apartment across from his, sexy but wholesome DJ Simi Chatterjee (Bipasha Basu). The pair soon drift into a romantic relationship.
Ray is still worried about his lack of money, however. At least until the day when, sitting by a roadside lottery booth, he suddenly remembers that he has a camera which can take pictures of the future. He starts playing the lottery, and then betting on horse races and cricket, and then playing the stock market. Before too long, he’s driving a fancy new car, living in a lovely new house, and missing dates with Simi because he’s too busy making money.
Ray’s sudden financial success has also attracted the interest of some shady people, most notably femme fatale Sophia (Sophiya Chaudhary) and the murderous but unfortunately named Captain (Rahul Dev). (Really. That’s his name. He’s not a captain, he’s just Captain.) Ray and Simi do what any sensible couple would do when faced with a criminal willing to kill for their magic camera – they flee to Thailand. But running won’t change the fact that the last picture of Ray was blank.
Aa Dekhen Zara is a surprisingly focused movie. With a running time of less than two hours, there isn’t room for any of the usual Bollywood filler. There are no comic sideplots or wacky sidekicks, nobody has a family, and even the romance between Simi and Ray is understated; they need to be in a relationship for the plot to work, but there’s no need for the greatest love story ever told, so the film focuses on the relationship just long enough to establish it, then returns to the time camera shenanigans.
The end result is a movie which is, for want of a better word, nifty. It’s not high art, and it’s not likely to make any top ten lists, but it’s a solid and entertaining film with catchy songs and an interesting central gimmick.
The film makes no attempt at all to explain how the camera is supposed to work; it’s SCIENCE, but it may as well be magic. Through a combination of exposition and trial and error, Ray quickly discovers the rules governing the camera’s use; it will only photograph the future, you can only take one picture of a person or object on a particular day, and a blank picture means that the subject is going to die.
Ray also quickly discovers that while the future depicted in the photographs is open to interpretation, it cannot be changed. (Impressively, the movie actually establishes this rule, and then sticks to it; everything depicted in the photographs comes to pass.) Happily, while discovering this, he makes the acquaintance of the woman in the apartment across from his, sexy but wholesome DJ Simi Chatterjee (Bipasha Basu). The pair soon drift into a romantic relationship.
Ray is still worried about his lack of money, however. At least until the day when, sitting by a roadside lottery booth, he suddenly remembers that he has a camera which can take pictures of the future. He starts playing the lottery, and then betting on horse races and cricket, and then playing the stock market. Before too long, he’s driving a fancy new car, living in a lovely new house, and missing dates with Simi because he’s too busy making money.
Ray’s sudden financial success has also attracted the interest of some shady people, most notably femme fatale Sophia (Sophiya Chaudhary) and the murderous but unfortunately named Captain (Rahul Dev). (Really. That’s his name. He’s not a captain, he’s just Captain.) Ray and Simi do what any sensible couple would do when faced with a criminal willing to kill for their magic camera – they flee to Thailand. But running won’t change the fact that the last picture of Ray was blank.
Aa Dekhen Zara is a surprisingly focused movie. With a running time of less than two hours, there isn’t room for any of the usual Bollywood filler. There are no comic sideplots or wacky sidekicks, nobody has a family, and even the romance between Simi and Ray is understated; they need to be in a relationship for the plot to work, but there’s no need for the greatest love story ever told, so the film focuses on the relationship just long enough to establish it, then returns to the time camera shenanigans.
The end result is a movie which is, for want of a better word, nifty. It’s not high art, and it’s not likely to make any top ten lists, but it’s a solid and entertaining film with catchy songs and an interesting central gimmick.
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