People usually maintain to-do lists. But you know Susanna Anna-Marie Johannes inhabits a different space because she prepares a ‘to do away with’ list. Yes, each time she finds herself in a bad marriage she does away with her spouse – part because of their fatal flaws and part because of her own behavioural extremism.
In Vishal Bhardwaj’s Saat Khoon Maaf, Susanna (played by Priyanka Chopra) ages from a 20-something girl to a 60-something woman who is unabashedly optimistic about life as she walks down the aisle not once or twice but six times. Layers of caky make-up and different wigs aid Chopra in her transition. The viewer is informed of the movie’s timeline by mention of some key incidents, two of them being the Babri Masjid demolition and 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
Abetting Susanna in her crimes are a faithful butler, a matronly maid, a pint-sized horse trainer-cum-jockey and to some extent her godson Arun (played by Vivaan Shah). Among the songs it’s Darrling and Bekaraan which touch a musical apogee. The rest are just hummable.
Of the husbands, Irrfan Khan and Aleksandr Dyachenko fit their roles to a T. The latter mouths Shashi Kapoor’s dialogues and imitates Amitabh Bachchan’s posture, all in one breath. Neil Nitin Mukesh and John Abraham are okay. Annu Kapoor and Naseerudin Shah can’t do much in roles that expect them to pop the blue pill and apprise the benefits of mushroom, respectively.
The film’s best moments belong to Vivaan Shah who is eternally obliged to Susanna and secretly in love with her since he was a kid. He is perhaps the only one alive to know her darkest secrets. Subtle and restrained, Vivaan shows a lot of promise. It’s his voiceover that strings this movie together.
Saat Khoon Maaf does occasionally have good dialogues and scenes (the scene where Susanna and her aides dance around Dyachenko before killing him is one of them), but that’s about it. Like an elaborate Halloween fest you are taken from one marriage to another as Susanna bumps off each husband with serial ease. But even as her 'ex files' pile up and she flits in and out of various get-ups, Chopra is just about average. As a woman to whom temptation comes more than just often she is not fully convincing as Susanna. However there are scenes that stand out. Her struggles with a wife-beating poet, older Susanna’s first encounter with Keemat (played by Annu Kapoor) and the final confrontation with Arun are some of them.
Also, as a viewer I felt that in some parts, Susanna aged all of a sudden leaving me a bit confused.
To sum it up, as a cinematic experience, Saat Khoon Maaf does have something unusual to offer. But whoever said that unusual should be interesting was right and that’s where this movie fails.
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