Dobaaraa Movie Review: Trippy time loop-lapeta

Dobaaraa
Dir: Anurag Kashyap
Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Pavail Gulati, Rahul Bhat
Rating: 3/5

Of course, there is such a thing as an auteur, however collective a medium the movies may be - the director directs all the departments after all. In that respect, this is the least likely among what we've come to expect of an "Anurag Kashyap film". By which we assume a film aiming for the darkest side of the moon. Or at least packed with characters oscillating between disturbing extremes. Or somehow or the other obsessed with something/someone.

Okay, the latter bit holds true here too. But I don't know if it's the fact that this is Kashyap's first screen adaptation of an existing movie - Oriol Paulo's Mirage (2018) - there isn't an obvious political statement, either. Something he managed to brilliantly weave into his last release, the surreal drama Choked (2020).

Unless the minor exchange between a character at a police station in this picture counts, where the guy expresses his rights as a citizen - "I need a lawyer" - the cop goes, "You think you're in America?" True that!

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Dobaaraa is a time-travel, genre flick, tending towards even a romantic fantasy of sorts. It's something that at least I'm unaware has ever been attempted in a Hindi film before. More so, it's a film about existing in parallel universes, while the world is one, of course; or is it?

Explain that again? Meaning that people could exist in multiple time-lines - a nudge here in the present, messing up the likely future altogether; or the past, for that matter - which I guess is the opposite of destiny, wherein everything is assumed to be pre-decided.

There are The Terminator, Dr Strange, and Interstellar (or at least a Nolan) reference. But most importantly, how does this time loop-lapeta land on the lay audience? In a way that it's instantly accessible, first. Unlike a lotta geeky sci-fi, time dimension stuff that unnecessary make you feel dumb, for no reason at all - as if the audience owes the communicator the comprehension, instead of the other way round.

And this was my mild apprehension before walking into this movie, knowing there are at least two occasions (the short film in Ghost Stories, and the feature, No Smoking), when Kashyap hasn't conveyed his point convincingly enough.

Despite the plot simultaneously switching between two time settings - one in the present; the other in the mid-90s - Dobaaraa is a pretty straight and simple film, with a trippy background score, and even a proper Hindi soundtrack.

At no point are you overawed by the hypothesis. Which is that a camcorder exists in the past, which can teleport you to sneak a peek into the future - only at a certain place and moment, because of some kinda geomagnetic storm. Dobaara - as in twice over; and the time 2:12, when the phenomenon occurs - for the film's title is a fine pun on this theme.

Taapsee Pannu plays a nurse (in the present), who's unhappily married, with a husband (the ever dependable Rahul Bhat), and a little child. In the past is a young boy, who dies when a truck runs him over. Since we know this about this boy's death in the future, what if one prevents it from happening? What does that do?

Well, that's the basis of this telling Spanish piece, smartly adapted in an Indian/Pune setting by screenwriter Nihit Bhave, setting in motion a curious set of events, between a compelling cast of characters in mainly constricted spaces.

Frankly, we know everything about time travel only from fiction. No proof of any such thing exists in life. That said, if I were to explain the idea of this film to myself, literally in cosmetic terms, it would be this: Look at people who try botox, fillers, lip/nose-jobs and similar surgeries to fix their faces.

You change one thing that's natural, you've gotta change something else. The symmetry is disturbed. The damn face looks weirder otherwise. And then you fix some more, and eventually, everybody starts looking like Michael Jackson!

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That's how time works here. You can't change one moment, without getting into a loop of changing a full stack of events that were naturally meant to be, no? Basically, like with your face, don't mess with time (just saying).

And what happens when you do? You probably create parallel universes, where everything exists, but in different ways, making you think for a second: What if the life we are leading itself is a dream, before death happens?

If these random thoughts are going through your head, the film's done its magic trick. That it keeps you hooked all through was the most you'd expected from it anyway.