A day before it opens in theatres, Main Vaapas Aaunga has handed Imtiaz Ali something he has not enjoyed in years: near unanimity from India’s film critics. The first reviews of his Partition romance landed within minutes of each other on Thursday morning, and most of them read like apologies for ever doubting him.
The verdict matters beyond one director’s redemption. The film, produced by Applause Entertainment and running 166 minutes, walks into a theatrical market that has spent two years rewarding action spectacles and franchise universes. Whether a slow, grief-soaked love story can hold screens past its opening weekend is now the sharpest test of what Hindi cinema audiences will still pay for.
Hindustan Times said the film turns memory and longing into cinema that cannot be missed. News18 called it a soul-stirring love story that sees Partition through the eyes of lovers. DNA went furthest, declaring it Ali’s best work and the most effective Hindi love story of the last twenty years. Outlook India read it as a film about the human cost of Partition told through a story about home.
Koimoi rated the film four stars out of five and described it as a poem on love, praising a script it called caressing and super-empathetic to the extreme. The reservations, where they appeared, were consistent and mild. Filmfare found the film soulful but meandering, News9 felt it finds its heart only in the second half, and several reviewers agreed the 166 minutes could have been trimmed.
Naseeruddin Shah plays Ishar Singh Grewal, an elderly Sikh man whose dementia keeps returning him to Sargodha before Partition, and to a forbidden romance with a Muslim woman. Vedang Raina plays the younger Ishar opposite Sharvari as Afsana, while Diljit Dosanjh appears as Nirvair, the grandson who follows the trail of his grandfather’s unfinished past across the India-Pakistan border. Rajat Kapoor, Sanjay Suri and Manish Chaudhari fill out the cast.
A.R. Rahman scores the film with lyrics by Irshad Kamil, reuniting the team behind Amar Singh Chamkila. The soundtrack carries its own farewell gesture: a bonus version of Kya Kamaal Hai, sung by Dosanjh and dedicated to refugees, plays over the end credits, as The Eastern Herald reported on Wednesday.
Applause Entertainment opens the film on Friday against Haunted 3D in a crowded June calendar. Trade outlet IWMBuzz reported in late May that North American advance bookings opened a week ahead of release because of demand, and the studio staged a special screening in Mumbai on Wednesday night that drew much of the industry. Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha, in remarks carried by IANS, called Ali’s work a rare example in times when directors are getting ruthlessly stripped.
What no review can settle is the commercial question. Ali’s last theatrical outing at this scale arrived to a different market, and the film’s length will limit show counts from the first day. The box office numbers that come in on Friday evening will show whether the critics’ enthusiasm translates into footfalls, and whether Hindi cinema’s long romance drought ends at a remembered village in Sargodha.
