Kaun?(Varma, 1999)IMDB LinkIt is possible that I like “Kaun” for all the wrong reasons. The raves about this movie seem to be about how thrilling it was. I did not find it thrilling at all, and found the film to be a caricature of fear.
How much of the comedy was intentional? It does not matter. The process of film watching becomes a personal, subjective activity, and the director’s intentions matter less, when you decide to take charge of the movie experience and make it your own.
And the experience is mine and therefore, my understanding of the film becomes personal. To me, whether the director intended or not, is an exaggeration of paranoia. A young woman is alone in her house and she starts hearing things. The director constantly raises the volume of the scary soundtrack, as she opens a door or something, and it always ends of being nothing. The director does this so many times that I started finding it amusing, a self-serving act of fear, the more you get scared, the more you feel like things are happening all around you, and past confirmations of it being nothing, does not necessarily end the fear.
After about twenty or so minutes, the film starts including one more character. A stranger that knocks and insists on coming in. The addition of this character adds another dimension to the film, having paranoia affect how one sees a stranger.
The film ends with a twist, would have been ridiculous if I had taken the film that seriously. But the acting, the pacing, the music, and the lines, made the twist, as ridiculous as it was, a fitting end to this strange movie.
3/5
