8 AM Metro Review - Poetically Intellectual, Dramatically Half-Brained

Raj Rachakonda's 8 AM Metro is a poetic romance, or better said, a friendship drama, starring Saiyami Kher and Gulshan Devaiah. It does look like an extramarital affair drama in the beginning, but hardly a few brains can understand that it wasn't so. Even the love triangle thing doesn't apply here, and that's why it's intellectual. But then, our mainstream brains at filmmaking had to make it look like a love triangle to reduce the amount of intelligence. Going back to David Lean's classic Brief Encounter (1945), this formula of two temporary or unspoken love can be found in many movies in old Hollywood. We may never get "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday.." from Casablanca (1942) ever again, as love triangles just can't be that awesome again. The same mic-drop burn can hardly be recreated, like In the Mood for Love (2000) and Lunch Box (2013) did. 8 AM Metro could have been the next classic on this list if wanted, but all it wanted to become was a mainstream romantic-cum-friendship drama. Why? Let's find out. 8 AM Metro is about a Marathi married woman, Iravati (Saiyami Kher), who has a phobia of travelling by train and bus. Her fate decides to go against her health, as she has to go to a different city to take care of her pregnant sister for two weeks. For that, she has to travel by metro train daily, causing her mental trouble. On her first journey in a metro, she bumps into Preetam (Gulshan Devaiah), and they become friends in their next meetings. They spend good times together as Iravati writes poems and Preetam loves reading them. During this period of friendship, Iravati's panic attacks are gone, and Preetam is also enjoying her company. Will their friendship be a special friendship or turn into love? Will it be possible for Iravati to tell everything to her husband and live with the pressure of hiding her feelings inside her heart?8 AM Metro promises a lot of path-breaking theories as it does not attempt to bring love or extramarital affairs into a potential friendship (a special friendship, to be precise). Every time Iravati would look at Preetam, it would never be like a lover, but a friend. Mind you, you need keen eyes to notice that. They get out of the train, Preetam goes in his direction, and Iravati will be smiling with the joy that she has defeated her fear and of a new beginning in her life. A couple of romantic songs try to fool us—the audio, I mean—but the visuals never pretend any sort of love story. Any other screenwriter or director would have spoiled these moments with typical looking back, slow mo, tears, and probably kisses, killing the organic purity.8 AM Metro is a beautiful poem about a special bond that one woman and one man can only dream about. However, all these fresh and conversational spirits are brought down by regular drama in the second half and an unnecessarily dragged-out climax. Remember how the Lunch Box just went off on a partition note? Or how suddenly does Rick decide to leave his lover in Casablanca? That sudden, painful shock is missing. There was a great deal of scope due to the poetic boost, but the opportunity was wasted by the writers. Whatever one or two surprises are there, they are highly predictable for intellectual cinephiles. How can that clever and inspiring Preetam's character be turned into an irritating Devdas? That's your USP, because we hardly see a man playing such a character in movies nowadays; how can you go wrong with him? That too, after telling us that he has been reading so much material about the geniuses and after his apt speeches. A sad case of mismatch!8 AM Metro has two lead actors filling almost 90% of the screen space, so it's basically a film run by two leads. I didn't like Saiyami Kher's accent, but I liked her performance. I would have loved to see a fluent accent from her side for the poems, but that would have been contradictory to her character as she was playing a typical, backward housewife. Still, a little bit more sweetness wouldn't have caused diabetes for me. Gulshan Devaiah is a fine actor, even if he goes "Blurr" once in a while. This film makes the blur go blurred, as he delivers another fine performance. Like I said, the character went wrong, so I can't really blame him for that. I'd rather blame the writer. Umesh Kamat and other supporting cast members have been watchable with whatever screen space they had in between.Coming to the music, 8 AM Metro has got a couple of soothing compositions that work just too well according to situations. The popular number Ae Khuda hardly appears for half a minute, but Woh Khuda and Ghoomey cover the loss. Sunny Kurapati's cinematography is good, except for 2-3 bad frames. The production value seems alright for the budget, while the editing has been a little bit rusty in the last quarter. The dialogues and the poems are sublime, but they'll only work if you want to go in deep to understand them. Ornamental and allegorical words are more beautiful when you understand the subtle meaning behind them. Raj's direction had almost won me over, only to go astray in the last 20 minutes. I'd like to forget those mistakes, though, and taking out only the positives, I'll definitely take a few things with me. I just wish he had understood what the finishing touch to an intellectual film means, and 8 AM Metro would have reached the right station. For now, it's an average affair that can be watched for good performances by Saiyami and Gulshan, beautiful poems, and as an attempt to describe a new meaning of a special bond between a man and a woman.