Andhadhun begins with a one-eyed rabbit taking a shot, missing death, and going right back to its cabbage. It is a small, wonderfully strange joke. Partial vision is not a handicap here; it is an advantage. The thing that cannot see the whole picture is also the thing that cannot be fully seen. Sriram Raghavan spends the rest of the film playing around with that idea.
Aakash (Ayushmann Khurrana), a pianist in Pune, may be blind or may simply be pretending to be blind. The screenplay (Raghavan, Arijit Biswas, Pooja Ladha Surti, Yogesh Chandekar, Hemant Rao) does not turn this into a puzzle that needs to be solved in the final reel. His glances, timing and little physical reactions keep both possibilities alive. And once we accept that we cannot quite verify him, every relationship he forms becomes uncertain. Sophie (Radhika Apte) is the first to trust him, getting him work at her father’s club. She is not there to make sense of Aakash. She is simply someone who believes what she sees.
Andhadhun’s second lead is Simi (Tabu), wife of Pramod Sinha (Anil Dhawan), a former star who is still very much in love with his own legend. Their marriage looks ordinary until Simi talks to her husband about crab meat being an aphrodisiac and goes about the rather mundane business of preparing it. The scene is deliberately casual.
Raghavan does not announce what she is capable of. He lets us see the kind of person she is before violence enters the picture. Tabu plays her with remarkable control: amused, practical and, when required, absolutely ruthless. Khurrana is equally restrained. Since the character has to remain an open question, any attempt to visibly “play” the mystery would have given too much away.
After the murder, Andhadhun stops being a conventional story about finding the killer. New characters keep turning up, each with something to hide, while Aakash’s blindness remains unresolved. The organ-smuggling episode, which can initially feel like a detour, actually fits the film’s strange moral universe. It is another world where people have their own rules and where something deeply disturbing can be discussed with almost casual normalcy. Zakir Hussain and Chhaya Kadam understand exactly how to play that absurdity.
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The final act is where the film really has fun with the information it has been withholding. Not every character gets a neat ending and not every question is answered. That can be frustrating if you expect Andhadhun to tie everything up, but it also makes sense. This is a film where everyone is trying to know more about everyone else while giving away as little as possible.
The black-and-white touches add to that mood. The piano, the cat, the chessboard and several other objects keep returning in ways that make them feel more significant than they initially appear. Music is used just as cleverly. Aakash can move from ‘Kehna Hai’ and old Dhawan songs to a loud club number because music is part of the performance he puts on. Daniel B. George’s background score gives Andhadhun a completely different texture, often signalling a change in mood before we have fully registered it ourselves. Even the seemingly ordinary objects, from the His-Her mugs to the wine bottle, eye mask and Shiva tattoo, gradually acquire meaning.
K. U. Mohanan’s camera is equally alert to what Andhadhun wants us to see and what it wants to hide. The cut from Simi to the scream mask is a terrific example of how much Raghavan can achieve in just a few seconds. The first time Aakash visits the Sinha house is even better. The writing, sound, camera movement and performances all work together without any of them trying to overpower the others. Raghavan’s casting is just as precise. Ashwini Kalsekar gets very little screen time as the inspector’s wife but manages to completely take over her scenes.
Andhadhun is ultimately about deception and how people use it to get through life. Everyone wants to know what the other person knows, while making sure the other person never gets the full picture. Andhadhun does not give us any more certainty than it gives its characters. It is not really a whodunit, nor is it a morality tale disguised as a thriller. It is a wonderfully unpredictable film about people trying to stay one step ahead of one another.
And perhaps that is why the one-eyed rabbit feels like such a perfect way to begin it.
Rating: ★★★★
Andhadhun is now streaming on Netflix.
