365 Days Review

As a narrator Ram Gopal Varma interrupts now and then to tell us what happened on some Nth day in the lives of Apoorv (Nandu) and Shreya (Anaika Soti).  He says what Apoorv said to Shreya on the Nth day, but we realize to our horror that twice he said so in the form of a song!

Once a romantic song comes across as a rip-off of ‘Vaareva emi face…’ Is there any filmmaker in India who has paid so many number of tributes to himself like RGV has done?

‘365 Days’ would have been a sensible film had RGV avoided the bizarre exterior.  When a husband is too busy to be caring towards his wife, he need not seem like a curmudgeon in his body language.  When a wife is disappointed with his hubby, she need not have the composure of a possessed woman or a pathological personality.  RGV explores a line that has been dissected, among others, by the underrated film ‘Galipatam’ in recent times; he scratches the surface, presents some insights into why some husbands watch pornography (for example), tells why expectations can create problems in a marriage (RGV’s fans may be told at this point that he did not discover this for the first time)..

The film is told as a story that unfolds over a span of three 365 days.  Apoorv meeting Shreya, he falling in love with her, they getting married, and eventually getting separated happens in a span of 365 days.

The narration is dated; watching an RGV male lead using age-old proverbs to drive home a point and wooing his girl with rudimentary palmistry knowledge and saying things like, “Nuvu ani pilavacha..” feels jaded.  The female lead saying, “Avunu.. picha pichaga nachesadu..” with an animated expression is another outdated moment from the film a director who condemns things conventional (like duets) as if he were an evergreen avant garde creator.  This ostensibly ‘hatke’ filmmaker falls back on none other than Posani Krishna Murali to deliver a sex-IPC Section 498A Dhoka ‘dekko’ on two different occasions.  RGV does the RGV of 90s by having Posani sing on why males shouldn’t marry for good..

Rendering the sacred ‘mangalyam’ hymn as if it were a ‘Sarkar’ moment is another masterstroke.

At some 45 minutes, the first half is shorter than the short-lived marriage of the lead pair.  The good portions come after we lose all hope.  It is like inputs from a psychology session were smuggled into a film, complete with not-so-open advocacy of the meaningfulness of marriage.  If Posani is shown to trust sex and not non-existent love in a scene, it is later revealed that there is a reason for his frustration.  All in all, RGV delivers a film that is conventional in every respect, whether consciously or otherwise.  The difference is that there is no elderly couple to carry out a counseling session for the benefit of the couple out to choose their different paths.

If some scenes are so vacuous that they could have been part of a B-grade television soap, others have lines that are insipid.  When a director of RGV’s standing is wielding the megaphone, you expect at least a film belonging to a less-tried genre (in his case) to come up with different strokes.

Nandu fits the bill, it's nobody's case that he is a good actor though.  Anaika is a glam doll, who is objectified in songs whether she is a girl friend or wife.  One feels the songs should have been visualized differently so that there existed some distinction from RGV's previous sensuous numbers in films belonging to other genres.

Verdict: A dated narration that doesn't have the nuances of a 'Galipatam'.

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