One thing I learned from Bhoot is that the very best ghost stories are never really about the ghost, they’re about people. The makers of Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007) clearly agree with me.
The family of Siddharth Chaturvedi (Shiney Ahuja), and especially Siddharth’s adopted cousin and childhood sweetheart Radha (Amisha Patel), are delighted when he leaves America and returns to his family estate. Radha is a little less delighted when she learns that he’s brought his new wife Avni (Vidya Balan) with him. His uncle Badrinarayan (Masnoj Joshi) isn’t pleased at all when he learns that Siddharth plans to live in the family palace; the place is haunted, after all. Still, Siddharth is the rightful Rajah, so if he wants to live in a haunted palace, the entire family will movie in there with him.
Siddharth is a modern guy, and doesn’t really care about any alleged ghosts. He only wants to move into the palace to make Avni happy; she’s a modern woman, but she enjoys the pageantry and tradition. Avni is fascinated by the ghost story; when she learns that nobody ever goes into the third floor, she just has to look, and when she discovers the locked door that’s supposed to keep the ghost trapped, she just has to open it.
Once the door is opened, spookiness ensues; one of the maids is terrified by a mysterious female figure, Anvi’s video camera is smashed and her Sari is set on fire, and someone is singing and dancing on the third floor every night. Uncle Badrinarayan tries to call in the famous priest Yagyaprakashji Bharti (Vikram Gokhale), but the priest is busy lecturing at Trinity College. His assistant (Rajpal Yadav) tries to help, but sees the ghost and is terrified into bad comic-relief insanity.
Siddharth, on the other hand, contacts his psychiatrist friend Doctor Aditya Shrivastav (Akshay Kumar.) Aditya is a big goofy guy, and the family react accordingly. He’s also very shrewd (and played by the star of the film) so he quickly sets to work unraveling the web of intrigue.
Bhool Bhulaiyaa is a mystery, more than anything else, and so it’s hard to talk about the plot without giving the whole thing away. On the other hand, as a mystery it plays fair. The big reveal fits perfectly with everything that has gone before, and all of the guns on the mantel are fired at the appropriate time. The subplots do not fare quite so well; Aditya’s romantic plot line is not only resolved almost entirely off screen, it isn’t even mentioned until the resolution.
What impressed me about Bhool Bhulaiyaa is the treatment of the relationship between science and religion. In most ghost-themed Indian movies, either the scientific explanation is completely wrong, and the ghost can be laid to rest only by embracing tradition, or there are no ghosts, and the only way to solve the problem is by rejecting superstition and embracing science. In Bhool Bhulaiyaa, the priest and the psychiatrist work together to save the girl and exorcise the ghost, and there’s no hint of conflict between the two approaches. (The specific psychiatry employed in the film is nonsense, however. Therapy does not work that way.) The film is also vague about whether the ghost is really a ghost, or just the creation of a troubled mind. In the end, though, it doesn’t really matter. The ghost is not as important as the people she haunts.
The family of Siddharth Chaturvedi (Shiney Ahuja), and especially Siddharth’s adopted cousin and childhood sweetheart Radha (Amisha Patel), are delighted when he leaves America and returns to his family estate. Radha is a little less delighted when she learns that he’s brought his new wife Avni (Vidya Balan) with him. His uncle Badrinarayan (Masnoj Joshi) isn’t pleased at all when he learns that Siddharth plans to live in the family palace; the place is haunted, after all. Still, Siddharth is the rightful Rajah, so if he wants to live in a haunted palace, the entire family will movie in there with him.
Siddharth is a modern guy, and doesn’t really care about any alleged ghosts. He only wants to move into the palace to make Avni happy; she’s a modern woman, but she enjoys the pageantry and tradition. Avni is fascinated by the ghost story; when she learns that nobody ever goes into the third floor, she just has to look, and when she discovers the locked door that’s supposed to keep the ghost trapped, she just has to open it.
Once the door is opened, spookiness ensues; one of the maids is terrified by a mysterious female figure, Anvi’s video camera is smashed and her Sari is set on fire, and someone is singing and dancing on the third floor every night. Uncle Badrinarayan tries to call in the famous priest Yagyaprakashji Bharti (Vikram Gokhale), but the priest is busy lecturing at Trinity College. His assistant (Rajpal Yadav) tries to help, but sees the ghost and is terrified into bad comic-relief insanity.
Siddharth, on the other hand, contacts his psychiatrist friend Doctor Aditya Shrivastav (Akshay Kumar.) Aditya is a big goofy guy, and the family react accordingly. He’s also very shrewd (and played by the star of the film) so he quickly sets to work unraveling the web of intrigue.
Bhool Bhulaiyaa is a mystery, more than anything else, and so it’s hard to talk about the plot without giving the whole thing away. On the other hand, as a mystery it plays fair. The big reveal fits perfectly with everything that has gone before, and all of the guns on the mantel are fired at the appropriate time. The subplots do not fare quite so well; Aditya’s romantic plot line is not only resolved almost entirely off screen, it isn’t even mentioned until the resolution.
What impressed me about Bhool Bhulaiyaa is the treatment of the relationship between science and religion. In most ghost-themed Indian movies, either the scientific explanation is completely wrong, and the ghost can be laid to rest only by embracing tradition, or there are no ghosts, and the only way to solve the problem is by rejecting superstition and embracing science. In Bhool Bhulaiyaa, the priest and the psychiatrist work together to save the girl and exorcise the ghost, and there’s no hint of conflict between the two approaches. (The specific psychiatry employed in the film is nonsense, however. Therapy does not work that way.) The film is also vague about whether the ghost is really a ghost, or just the creation of a troubled mind. In the end, though, it doesn’t really matter. The ghost is not as important as the people she haunts.
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