Kabir Singh Review: Style Over Substance!

Kabir Singh, Shahid Kapoor’s latest, is billed as a romantic drama but it is more a tale of self-destruction and addiction than romance. This film is a scene-by-scene remake of the 2017 Telugu Language blockbuster Arjun Reddy. Kabir Singh is going to be a hit as well if the completely occupied state of theatres is anything to go by. However in my opinion, this film is deeply problematic because of its misogynistic storytelling and its glorification of terrible behaviour.

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Kabir Singh is the story of a rich, young M.B.B.S student, (who has clearly never been taught to take no as an answer) with anger management issues – in addition to being somewhat of an alcoholic. He meets a girl and falls in love with her (if we can even call it love – it feels more like an abuse of power by a senior in college). He eventually has his heart broken when the girl’s father marries her off to someone else. This leads to Kabir losing his grip on reality. He becomes a full-blown alcoholic, drug-abusing womanizer and his anger management issues become worse, if that was even possible. The rest of the story seems to move in a circle as he unravels more and more with each passing day.

Firstly, the positives – Shahid Kapoor does give a very intense performance which is completely justified because the character itself is extremely intense. Kiara Advani has very little to do than look pretty. This is evidenced by the fact that her character does not even speak at all in her first few scenes. When she does speak, it is to ask Kabir why he loves her – his answer is more creepy than romantic. However, the best performance for me was by Soham Majumdar who plays Kabir’s college friend, Shiva. Although, Shiva enables Kabir’s terrible behavior, he is the only one who sticks by him loyally through everything. He also gets to deliver some funny lines in what is otherwise a very dark movie. The music is hummable but within the context of the movie, it seems very mismatched to the action on screen.

The negatives – which saturate this movie – unfortunately, far outweigh the positives. Sandeep Reddy Vanga, who also made the original, is clearly trying to portray Kabir as a “hero”. A macho guy with a cigarette dangling from his lips at all times while he consumes copious amounts of alcohol and drugs, hurling abuses and punches at everyone and marking a girl he has never even talked to as “my woman”. Kabir is such a problematic character but the director, in his hero-worship, is glorifying this terrible behaviour.

There are some extremely cringe-worthy scenes in this movie. There is one where Kabir is about to rape a woman on knifepoint. In another he chases his maid down flights of stairs to hit her for breaking a glass. You read that right – breaking a glass. He treats his lady-love like something to be possessed and not as a person. He hits her – although she hits him back – both are equally wrong and set a terrible example for  impressionable young people watching. She seems to be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome though, because the more awful his behaviour is, the more clingy she becomes. The messes in Kabir’s life also spillover into his professional life where he performs surgeries when under the influence.

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At the peril of being labelled a feminist, can you imagine a version of this film with a female protagonist? One who is an alcoholic, arrogant, addict, who sleeps around and hits people at will? If such a film were ever made, such a character would most definitely not be glorified like Kabir is. However, my biggest problem with Kabir Singh, besides its almost 3 hour runtime, is its ending. After putting us through such a display of self-destructive behaviour, Kabir gets an unearned happy ending. There is not even a montage displaying him changing his behaviour in the slightest. That is such a cop out and does not mirror real life at all.

As the credits rolled on this movie, the men in the audience clapped and cheered – they had done so throughout the movie in the metro city multiplex I was at – and some women joined in too. And I was left wondering how can we allow such movies to be released – but ban films like Fire and Black Friday  for being too provoking. What a travesty!

Rating – 2/5 | Grade – C

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