8 AM Metro: The Gulshan Devaiah, Saiyami Kher Film Should Have Been A Book

THE world is divided into two types of people. One, who loved Farhan Akhtar’s recitation of Javed Akhtar’s poetry in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (“toh zinda ho tum..” to refresh your memory); and two, who found it to be a glaring distraction from what was happening on screen. If you belong to the former category, you will have lots to love in Raj Rachakonda’s 8 AM Metro, which was released on ZEE5 this weekend. But if you belong to the latter category, get ready to be bored out of your wits, as even Gulshan Devaiah’s watchable face will not be able to save the film.

Based on ‘Andamina Jeevitam’, a Telugu book by Malladi Venkata Krishna Murthy, the premise of 8 AM Metro is quite fascinating. Irawati (Saiyami Kher) is a homemaker living in Nanded with a fairly regular, domesticated life. She’s a closet poet, and can often be seen with a pen and a diary, writing down her thoughts pensively. When her sister Riya is advised bed rest in the eighth month of her pregnancy, she has to rush to Hyderabad to be by her side.

We learn that Irawati has a phobia of trains due to a traumatic incident from her childhood. Several panic attacks later, she finally starts to use the morning metro to visit her sister in the hospital, and it’s all thanks to Pritam (Gulshan Devaiah), who helps distract her with conversations about literature, Hyderabad, their respective families and much more, over piping hot cups of filter coffee. Pritam and Iravati form a warm friendship over the course of two weeks, as co-passengers in the 8 am metro train.

Iravati and Pritam seemingly have a lot in common. Both are burdened by the mundaneness of their lives, both have families that they’ve prioritised, while their art (writing, poetry, literature in their case) has taken a backseat. Both like coffee and ruminating about life over it. And in finding each other, they both gain a temporary escape from their lives, traumas and troubles. The movie ends as breezily as it begins, with no concrete markers of a beginning, middle and end. Much like a train journey, the story of 8AM Metro begins at one milestone in the lives of Pritam and Iravati, and ends on another. We learn everything we need to know about them in between.

With a cast like Gulshan Devaiah (who can honestly do any role with utmost earnestness), Saiyami Kher and prose by Gulzar, I went into this film expecting some kind of poetry in motion. Unfortunately, too much seems forced in the film, most of all Saiyami’s wooden performance. A lot of screen time is spent in close ups of her face as Gulzar’s poetry is recited with Kher’s own voiceover. It’s slightly difficult to digest this because the words seem deeply philosophical, but Kher possesses neither the gravitas nor the voice modulation to carry scenes of this nature. Much of the art and writing in the film is too on-the-nose and one tone, and it left me wondering if this would be a better book to read rather than a film to watch.

The only reason I could pull through 2 hours of 8AM Metro is Devaiah, who is an actor par excellence. His character doesn’t emote much through the film, but he has the most organic graph. Devaiah uses his emotional acting frugally, to great results by the climax. If we were to compare, Kher goes through many emotions through the two hours: happiness, panic, anxiety, joy, satisfaction, etc. But each of those emotions feel like a performance. Devaiah has one scene in which his character breaks down; it’s a silent scene with not too many dialogues, but it conveys more than the entire film does. I wish I didn’t have to be so critical of Kher, because she seems like an earnest performer; unfortunately her sincerity doesn’t translate to much on screen.

I cannot, in good faith, recommend that anybody watch this film, even though it’s not an outwardly bad one. It’s merely two hours of nothing. You won’t walk away from watching 8AM Metro feeling much. Maybe only that Gulshan Devaiah needs to be given a variety of roles that test his acting prowess — because boy, can he deliver!

8 AM Metro is streaming on ZEE5 

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of OTTplay. The author is solely responsible for any claims arising out of the content of this column.