Brahmastra: Ayan Mukerji’s film is an insult to Alia Bhatt’s acting talent

Brahmastra, which hit theaters last weekend for the first time in eight years since it was first announced, is an excruciating theatrical experience with the power to shatter both your eardrums and your will to live. It’s an overlong, incoherently plotted movie that regularly steals from all obvious sources — Harry Potter, MCUStar Wars, and even Avatar: The Last Airbender — and seemingly convinced no one will ever notice. Little trust), so he feels the need to loudly spoon-feed every last drop of his explanation, so by the time he leaves the theater, he’s ridiculously dazed, you know yourself in Sanskrit. You are thinking to yourself.

And no one screams louder than Bhatt’s Isha. Bhatt’s Isha, literally within his 24 hours of first meeting, tearfully expresses a Parvati-like devotion to his boyfriend Shiva when he’s not calling out to him. In this 24 hours of her life, Shiva (played by Ranbir Kapoor) creepily pursues her at a party, manipulating her into giving her points as a brownie by saying she is taking care of her orphaned children, then left her on her rooftop. The next day, he reveals to Isha the big “raaz” of his life—he had a disturbing vision for as long as he can remember—and that he will never keep her secret from her again. I promise

Shiva soon broke this promise when he caught Isha messing with fire on her trip to Varanasi. He tells her he has a ‘rishta’ with her ‘aag’ as her description. Looking at Isha’s anguished expression on her face, he may have told her he was having a “rishta” with another woman.To be fair to her, her anger is justified will be She was unequivocally promised that there would be no more secrets between them and Shiva told her that he was immune to the flames!

With little reason to still get involved with the (secret, super-powered) man she just met, Isha tells Shiva that she knows he’s special, and that fate will bring them together at this particular moment. Once tied up, tell him that it must be so.It is her duty to do his bidding. I know that the film may have been conceptualized before those involved heard the word ‘awakened’, but writing it this way would be a mistake even in times when Brahmastras are being portrayed. It will be outdated.

Isha, later called “the button”, is literally an inanimate object that Shiva needs to perform catalytic functions in his travels. In the film’s ludicrous climactic her action sequence, she accompanies him onto the battlefield with a lighter in hand, ready to quickly flick it and bring it to life. — and help Shiva ignite his powers.

Yet another mundane task is outsourced to Isha, deep in the second half of the film, when she is with Shiva at the home of Guruji’s gifted youth in Himachal Pradesh.She is told to return to Shiva’s chaur Mumbai, secures his dead mother’s last belongings, packs them in an overnight bag, and returns everything to him. So after about two hours of being force-inserted into her life-changing drama, which she never asked for, Isha is asked to give Shiva some room to focus on her training. liger It is described as “Tudair”. In Mumbai, she is attacked by one of her three henchmen of the villain, but still – apart from Shiva – the movie sees Isha refusing to save herself. Sends her two of Guruji’s super-powered disciples to save her skin in a blatant act of deus ex machina. Brahmastra often relies on such plot conveniences rather than developing characters through story.

And for a film whose mission statement is a variation on Harry Potter’s “Love is the Mightiest Superpower” Mumbo Jumbo, Brahmastra treats Isha and Shiva’s romantic arc with great care. Karan Johar In fact, Bhatt is better treated in an episode of Koffee with Karan, in which she is not, than in Brahmastra. Talk.

It’s one thing that Isha isn’t in the film — Brahmastra failed the Bechdel test spectacularly, of course — but Bhatt didn’t say anything about her character in real life either? , she did, but others may have simply not listened. Like some other elements in the film, it can be argued that Mukerji plays Isha’s storyline close to the chest. You don’t have to, but you’ll have to judge based on what’s shown in this movie.

And as we speak, considering Bat’s career is peaking. It’s a character that’s like arm candy, expected to be. Shiva may indeed be the chosen one, but there is nothing unique about this film. In fact, the poor treatment of female leads is just one of the many traits it shares with the worst kind of entertainment the industry has to offer.