Atrangi Re Movie Review: Vivid imagination, but what’s really going on?

The film, which is about love and appreciating its ability to transform lives, also delves into emotional abuse and childhood trauma

Atrangi Re
U/A: Drama
Dir: Aanand L Rai
On: Disney+Hotstar
Cast: Sara Ali Khan, Dhanush, Akshay Kumar
Rating: 2.5/5

Atrangi Re is ridiculous. It is mind bogglingly frustrating, especially in the first hour. Since it’s on Disney + Hotstar, expect yourself to frequently want to press the pause button. But I urge you to stay with this frantic tale of love. Director Aanand L Rai expects you to be a flight risk and thus he casts one of the country’s most delightful actors - Dhanush, to help his film power through the shaky start. His arresting screen presence makes you stay. Rai and his long-time collaborator Himanshu Sharma place their material somewhere between bizarre and poetic. On the surface, it’s a twisted love story. A feisty young girl - Rinku is forcefully married off. The character is a loud, shrieking, intolerable mess and Sara Ali Khan might not be consistently good at it but she is sincere at making sense of her. Rinku is angry, aggressive, looking for love and battling her own demons. It’s only when her new husband Vishu (played by Dhanush) enters her life, that she is compelled to sift through own trauma. Their marriage isn’t one of love. Because Rinku is in love with Sajad - a magician, years older than her and Muslim, which is why they aren’t together. 

Atrangi Re is disjointed and contrived. It’s hard to say too much about its misgivings without revealing spoilers. The film’s first hour banks too much on Rahman’s sweeping score to undo its wrongs and Dhanush single-handedly holds forte. Till that point, the story goes out of its way to make viewers despise Rinku. And then the film shifts its energy and tone, taking us along on a soul-searching quest to understand the myriad layers of human affection. In a nutshell, Atrangi Re is about the enduring nature of love and its ability to transform and heal. The narrative also delves into emotional abuse, childhood trauma, social evils etc.  The fact that Akshay Kumar’s Sajjad is a magician lends to the film a mystical, fairytale-like-feel that is aided by the brilliant cinematography of Pankaj Kumar. 

The film soars in its solid second half but it becomes just as problematic. Dhanush’s Vishu gets into a Raanjhanaa-mode, breaking bottles on his head and being the ‘aashiq’ pop culture expects women to fawn over. But staying true to his own brilliance, Dhanush sells this part to us by making him charming and vulnerable. I almost bought into the madness of this twisted tale. The magic realism of the story and the flamboyant frames almost casts a spell on you. The climax of the film is potent and moving. I admire Rai’s courage to attempt a complex film that’s so out-of-the-box. But what his film lacks is an in-depth understanding of mental health disorders - schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, which in 2021 is both ignorant and unacceptable. 

Atrangi Re establishes Rai's boundless imagination. It might sometimes miss the mark but the promise is laudable. I believe one day, soon enough, he will get it right. And simply for that, I will nudge him to keep dreaming big!

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