There's a heartbreakingly beautiful moment in October, writer Juhi Chaturvedi's new film, directed by Shoojit Sircar. As Banita Sandhu's Shiuli lies comatose in a hospital bed, Varun Dhawan's Dan comes by her bedside and asks her if she recognizes him.
In that brief microsecond, our hearts collectively insist that Shiuli respond affirmatively by moving her pupils in the right direction. What happens next is likely to break you down as it did to me – a flood of emotions rushed out with the rapid intensity of an overflowing dam. That brief moment of hope sums up the beauty of October, a deeply moving portrait of love, grief and our inability and strength to cope with the permanence of loss. It's also a tender coming-of-age drama that sobers down a restless young soul who feels the transformative effects of a seemingly random incident.
After slaving it off at the altars of commercial cinema, Varun Dhawan, today, has the luxury to choose films that leave the artist in him deeply fulfilled. And he's making some seriously brave choices. In October, he delivers one of his most endearing performances, a character so hopelessly likable, it's easy to forgive him even when he's in the wrong.
Is Dan naïve or the world around him too grown-up? Too adult? Too practical? When do we discard pragmatism and embrace our suppressed instincts to stop, reflect, nourish, before moving on? What does it take for us to truly empathize with pain which go beyond expressing condolences reeking of tokenism?
Dan is in search of being belonged. At the fancy hotel where he does less-than-fancy jobs, swatting flies and tidying up bedsheets, he feels underutilized. Shiuli's freak accident and the fact that she asked for him right before slipping away, gives him a sense of intimate belonging -- something he probably didn't feel even at home. He makes it his life's purpose to become a part of Shiuli's narrative, tending to her with an earnest sensitivity.
Every writing decision by Juhi Chaturvedi is rooted in the idea of reflecting the monotony and unpredictability of life. The snatches of conversations with the security guard, the nurse, the guy at the pharmacy, all of them, together create an authentic Delhi universe, one that feels so intimately familiar, you feel you are one of the family members, recoiled in silent mourning, clinging on to the final traces of hope, crying when nobody is looking -- like Shiuli's mother -- a devastatingly brilliant Gitanjali Rao, whose disheveled hair and mournful eyes convey both, her brokenness and her determination.
And yet, October, despite its tug-at-your-heartstrings background score (Shantanu Moitra) and its generally gloomy world, is consciously free of melodrama. It's a movie particularly interested in procedures and institutions: whether it's the clockwork precision with which an ICU works (there are specific shots, like that of a literal blood clot, that suck you into the anesthesia-smelling corridors of a hospital) or the messy techniques involved in the ostensibly glamorous perfection of a 5-star hotel. Chaturvedi is interested in creating a contrast –not just between the gloom of the hospital and the glamour of the hotel, but also between emotions and institutions. There's cold logic in how a hospital or a hotel functions, but there isn't one in how its inhabitants feel. It's rhythm versus. chaos, systems versus spontaneity.
But ultimately, October is about the power of hope and unconditional love, the healing effects of forgotten fragrances, and the unpredictability of life. We go about our lives hoping to meet that one person who'll make us want to live more passionately, love more deeply, and perhaps we even see them every day, telling ourselves that one day, we'll go befriend them and something beautiful might come out of it, a lyrical romance, a poetic friendship, maybe a shared life. Perhaps Dan feels that if he'd known Shiuli closely before the freak accident, he'd have been there on that ill-fated night and she'd have never gone?
Maybe it's remorse after all.
We trick ourselves into believing we have time. It's only when our archaic notions of the possibilities of love and the longevity of life are challenged that we take stock of the situation and try reclaiming what could have been joyously ours.
October is that.
It's an achingly tender meditation on loss, the agonizing pain of grief and how, in some extraordinary cases, all you get is a small window between life and death.
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