Gulshan Devaiah, Saiyami Kher in ‘8 AM Metro’
A film that reads like a well-meaning but rhetorical essay on trauma and unbearable grief, Raj Rachakonda’s metro at 8 am It’s like traveling on a train where the name of the incoming station is shouted out several times before reaching the platform, leaving little to wonder and imagination.
Feeling neglected in domesticity and battling her inner demons, Irawati (Saiyami Kher) travels from Nanded to Hyderabad to be with her younger sister Riya who is about to give birth to a baby boy.
Metro (Hindi) at 8 am
director: Raj Rachakonda
mold: Gulshan Devaiah, Saiyami Kher, Umesh Kamat
run-time: 116 minutes
Story: Dealing with personal traumas, Irawati and Pritam develop a bond on their daily commute to Hyderabad
On the train journey she is haunted by a terrifying memory that refuses to subside but Irawati somehow manages to reach Hyderabad. There again he has to take metro from the hospital to Riya’s house everyday to save time and money. help comes in the form of loveGulshan Devaiah), a man madly in love with books. He enlists the help of Irawati who is a closet poet and over time the two develop a bond over conversation over literature and coffee.
Slowly, we learn that Pritam is a banker who also has a bad balance sheet. As two strangers with children unknowingly heal each other’s trauma, we get some heartwarming moments about how grief wreaks havoc on one’s soul and how we let life slip by by indulging in fake issues. Pritam’s belief in literature as a reference point as we address the false notes we make in everyday life is an interesting device to bring this point across.
Gulshan captures the many layers of a complex character like Pritam and lays them before us one by one. Saiyami starts off well as she captures the waning joy of a housewife but as the film progresses, she hardly switches gears like the makers. Even the words of Gulzar, who shaped Iravati’s poetry on screen, seem borrowed. While constantly trying to deepen, the dialogue is trivially interwoven, making long passages sound like a hypocritical exercise on human relations.
Illustration from the novel by Telugu writer Malladi Ventaka Krishna Murthy Andamina Jeevitam, Raj could not distance the screenplay from the bookish nature of its source. There’s a certain pace to the action that might work on the pages but on screen they feel stiff and contrived. Shrouded in sadness, the emotional hilarity of the narrative lingers on the surface.
8 AM Metro is currently running in theatres.