Dobaara 2:12 - "Aanewaala pal..."

Dobaara

Hindi, 2022

Directed by Anurag Kasyap.

Stars Tapsee Pannu, Rahul Bhat, Aarrian Sawant, Pavail Gulati, Nassar

Mohan's Measure ⭐

Dobaara is Bollywood's rare attempt at Science Fiction, although many of its over the top tales could be labeled as such.  A remake of the Spanish Durante la tormenta, it closely follows the original in attempting to give us an example of what moviemakers and theoretical physicists call "the butterfly effect," in homage to Ray Bradbury's short story, The Sound of Thunder. 

In short, Ms. Tapsee is somehow connected through the power of a lightning storm to a time portal which gives her the opportunity to save someone's life. But, in doing so, she changes history such that her life is completely changed, and the daughter she thought she had...is never born. 

How this happens is never explained, nor is how she knows how to get back. We are just transported back and forth through two different times, and asked to take for granted how a little boy in the past becomes her lover in the present.

Now don't get me wrong. I've always liked Tapsee as an actress. She knows how to carry herself on the screen and prove that one needn't show one's midriff to be attractive.  But, in this movie her understatement comes across as overt stoicism. She acts as if time travel is like a bad hangover, and how the lives of so many people are second to her magically getting what her dream life. The rest of the cast seem to do little other than accept her fanciful notions, despite the fact she's a neurosurgeon responsible for the life of her patients.

This is disturbing, because the original intention of the butterfly effect is to suggest how delicate and interconnected the Universe, and we must learn to be cautious and considerate in how we live in it. 

The only thing we learn here is that Bollywood will never learn.