Fitoor Movie Review by Sputnik

Synopsis
Fitoor follows a young Kashmiri boy Noor (Aditya Roy Kapur), his muse Firdaus (Katrina Kaif) and a mercurial Begum (Tabu). The movie is an adaptation of the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Kashmir is the backdrop to the adaptation and Abhishek Kapoor employs the metaphor of Firdaus being Kashmir and Noor being India and Bilal being Pakistan expressly implied by the line “doodh mangoge to kheer denge Kashmir mangoge to cheer denge” that Noor shouts at Bilal.

The scenes involving the young Noor and the young Firdaus are very good. The scenes where the grown up Noor is enchanted with Firdaus are good too. The scene where the younger Begum gets ditched by her lover Mufti is good too. The scene where Noor’s sister gets killed is the best scene of the movie. All the songs are good and they are used quite well in the movie in the background. There is no lip syncing involved. The cinematography by Anay Goswami is very good and many of the scenes are beautifully shot. The paintings look great and the art structures look good too.

The first half of the movie is very good but the second half drags like anything and makes the movie exhausting to watch. Begum is on a wheelchair in one scene and then she is perfectly fine in another scene. The flashback involving Begum doesn’t really explain Begum’s motive to encourage the young Noor and then to break his heart. The movie also reminds of those Muslim socials from the 1950s/1960s where almost every character is a Muslim. Here too with probably the exception of Lara Dutta’s character everyone is a Muslim.

Aditya Roy Kapur is very earnest as Noor, the poor guy in love with the rich Firdaus. There is a certain vulnerability to his performance which makes him being repeatedly manipulated real. He does bring out the Fitoor (obsession) in his character. Katrina Kaif looks gorgeous but she is bad as usual when she has to act in any of the scenes. Tabu is very good as Begum and looks very pretty in the first half. Ajay Devgn has a small cameo and he is ok but his dialogues are very hard to understand in his first scene. Aditi Rao Hydari is good as the young Begum and the idea to use Tabu’s voice to dub her is good. Rahul Bhat is good as Bilal. Lara Dutta is ok as Leena. The kids playing the younger Noor and Firdaus are very well chosen with their facial resemblance to Aditya Roy Kapur and Katrina Kaif respectively. The kid playing the young Noor is excellent and his Kashmiri accent sounded very authentic. The girl playing Firdaus is very good too.

Abhishek Kapoor’s direction is very good in the first half but it falters badly in the second half. He tries to create this beautiful passionate love story and succeeds for a while only to deceive. The movie is still watchable for the effort but it isn’t the great movie that it aspires to be.