One look at the trailer of Shoojit Sircar’s I Want to Talk, and you would probably dismiss it as another medical drama–death looming large and set in a depressing hospital. Can’t blame the audience, though! The Bengali filmmaker made October (2018) entirely set in a hospital where the female protagonist falls off a building and stays on life support with just one man. Luckily, this film is not the same. 

Sicar’s I Want to Talk is characteristically different in tone and pace. It has many laughable and relatable moments, with a confused and bewildered Arjun Sen (Abhishek Bachchan) unable to come to terms with his illness and how it is changing his super-successful life in the United States. Suddenly, a man seen telling his colleague that he would either “convince or confuse” his client is now finding it hard to be “convinced” of his sickness or death. 

Arjun Sen is stubborn, and everyone complains about it. He is manipulative and tries hard to control everything in his life. He has a daughter and a failed marriage, but productivity is more important to him than anything. He is willing to part with everything–his job and house–just not his brand-new Cadillac. He is willing to get multiple surgeries done to remain in control. He goes to the doctor with print-outs of his cancer-affected organs and insists the doctor mark where incisions need to be done on those print-outs. Plus, the doctor has to answer all his questions. There’s no way out! Arjun is obstinate.

People around him say he is a big complain-box and might not even be as sick as he “pretends” to be. They allege he is just being dramatic. Now, these comments are very familiar to Indians around the world. Healthcare has never been a priority for Indians, even though they spend a fortune on predicting their deaths. Arjun is not scared of death; that becomes very clear when he tells his dove-eyed daughter that he is not dying and tells her he will be dancing with her at her wedding. But he has to let her be a part of his journey, which he refuses to do. And that causes some rifts and misunderstandings in their relationship as she grows up.

The father-daughter dynamic is central to the plot, considering how Arjun tries to manipulate his body, life, and everything around it. I Want To Talk will remind you of another Shoojit Sircar film about an obstinate father – Piku (2015). Here, too, there is a screaming yet loving daughter, a nosy dad who wouldn’t let his daughter drive alone at night, and a sick man who wants to do physically strenuous things. He wants to be there for his daughter. And that is why he needs to do this. Even when things get ridiculously painful, he never lets his daughter be affected by it. 

This interesting approach is the best thing about the movie. Most movies about terminally ill characters often show a typical “change of view” thing where audiences are “manipulated into” sympathizing with the sick character. Arjun doesn’t evoke any sympathy; he is an irritating man, a typical Indian father who asks his grown-up daughter to get rid of her boyfriend and keeps advising her on changing terminals or getting window seats on international flight journeys. He is deeply flawed, and the cancer diagnosis doesn’t change his heart or anything of the sort. He becomes even more overbearing instead, but he has his heart in the right place.

In one of the earlier scenes in the film, he plans on dying by suicide and sends thank-you gifts to people, including his nurse (played beautifully by Kristin Goddard). She becomes suspicious and calls him, trying to talk him out. He realizes eventually that there is a way out. And that way is to manipulate (he hates this word) his way out of this life-threatening disease, too. 

It isn’t easy though. When he is unable to breathe because 50% of his lungs have been taken away, he goes for a bi-max surgery to create more space to breathe. His job gets rid of him, just like he would when his employees wouldn’t perform. But, he doesn’t fret and frown. That’s how the world works. So, he decides to go with what the world of medicine offers and not give up just because a doctor told him he has 100 days to live. 

Several key scenes in the movie will melt your heart. Abhishek Bachchan and Ahilya Bamroo make a good father-daughter pair. Bachchan has given more than his heart and soul to the movie, and that shows in each frame. This movie is remarkably different from any other he has done in his career. He plays the role to perfection and even beyond. 

His performance speaks of his resilience and willingness to experiment even after being dismissed his entire career as a flop-star-kid and labeled “less successful” compared to his Miss World wife. His evolved choices show his confidence in his talent and acceptance of the unfair movie industry. Not many people can tolerate such brickbats and career-long trolling as he has and continues to do. 

Ahilya Bamroo is effervescent as Reya, Arjun’s daughter. Her expressions and relaxed demeanor make her a perfect fit for the role. The social media content creator-turned-actor moves pretty easily from emotionally charged scenes to slower ones and has definitely made her mark. The audience is already aware of her talent, and she lives up to her Instagram hype and popularity. 

Recently, Karan Johar’s 2004 hit Kal Ho Naa Ho was re-released in theatres, and you would expect that the storyline of I Want to Talk would be the same as Kal Ho Naa Ho. A terminally ill man is trying to live the last days of his life to the best of his abilities, finding joy in everything, mending his bad relationships, and then dying a hopeful, tearful, emotionally charged. Like Shah Rukh Khan’s character in Kal Ho Na Ho, Bachchan’s character has the same potential storyline. However, none of this emotional catharsis happens with Abhishek Bachchan in I Want to Talk. Not at all!

This movie offers a lot–a real-life story, not a fictional tale. You will float through the film and realize that pace is not everything in a movie; it goes beyond. Float through the film in a theatre because OTT platforms might not do justice to the movie. 

Review Courtesy of Neha Jha

Feature Image Credit to Fino Works via IMDb