Ek Din Review
There is a particular species of Hindi cinema that flourished in the early aughts — the kind that offered up the hopeless romantic as protagonist, allowed him to languish in unrequited devotion, and trusted that the audience would meet his earnestness with their own. Ek Din, the latest essay in this vanishing tradition, opens with precisely such a figure. Junaid Khan, framed in opening monologue, confides to us with disarming candor that he is a young man whom no one knows — and that all he wishes for, in the entire firmament of human acquaintance, is to be recognized by one particular girl who happens to share his office.
It is, one must admit, a premise of a certain antiquated charm — the species of dewy-eyed yearning that played beautifully two decades ago and now feels almost archaeological. As a remake, the film invites the inevitable question: what is new here? The answer, alas, is not very much.
Kunal Kapoor’s reappearance on screen, after what feels like a protracted absence, elicits a flicker of nostalgia — but only a flicker, and nothing more. It is when Sai Pallavi enters the frame that one senses some genuine hope for the proceedings. She brings a luminosity to her scenes that the screenplay scarcely deserves, and from her first frame, the film acquires a gravity it had not earlier possessed.
To its credit, Ek Din does not dawdle in establishing its premise. The exposition is mercifully unhurried, and for a stretch, this economy is the most one can say in the film’s favor. We are moving along well-worn rails — the predictable trajectory of a will-they-won’t-they office romance — when the proceedings are suddenly upended. Kunal Kapoor’s wife appears, and what follows is a contretemps so unexpected that the viewer is jolted into something resembling attention. Then, almost immediately, a second revelation lands — larger, stranger, more bewildering than the first. One stops, blinks, and leans forward.
It is here that the film at last becomes interesting.
The central conceit — the engine that drives the second half — is transient global amnesia, a diagnosis as recondite as it is convenient. It is, without question, the most singular twist the film has to offer, and also its most peculiar. The paradox it generates is genuinely affecting: our protagonist has at last won the girl, only to discover that, owing to her affliction, his happiness with her can extend for but a single day. And so begins an elaborate architecture of deception — a lie constructed not from malice but from a desperate, almost pitiable, refusal to accept the brevity of his fortune.
It is a premise that, in the hands of a more punctilious screenwriter, might have soared into genuine pathos. As it stands, Ek Din manages to make it work — largely because its leads inhabit their roles with credible conviction. Junaid Khan is earnest and watchable, but it must be said that Sai Pallavi rather overpowers him in every scene they share. Her command of emotional register, her capacity to suggest interior weather without telegraphing it, operates on an altogether higher plane. One finds oneself watching her even when the camera lingers on him.
The screenplay, however, is not without its lacunae. There is, for instance, a logical inconvenience that nags throughout the second half: when the entire company returns from Japan to India, how exactly does our protagonist remain behind? On what visa does he conduct his nightlong vigil over Sai Pallavi’s character? It is the sort of inattention to verisimilitude that betrays a screenplay rather more preoccupied with feeling than with fact — and once noticed, it cannot be quite unnoticed.
Still, there are pleasures to be had. The proposal sequence between Junaid and Meera is, without question, the film’s high-water mark — a moment of genuine warmth and well-judged restraint. The songs, too, are quite lovely; the soundtrack is, in its own quiet way, unimpeachable. And yet — and this is perhaps the film’s most consequential failure — almost no one seems to know about any of it. A peculiar marketing penumbra has kept Ek Din largely invisible to its potential audience, which is a genuine pity, for this is precisely the kind of family-friendly affair that, with proper visibility, might have found a devoted following.
The narrative does, alas, succumb to a certain soporific languor as it approaches its conclusion. Sai Pallavi’s character is, somewhat improbably, subjected to her cinematic affliction not once but twice — a structural choice that feels less like artful symmetry than like a writer reluctant to relinquish his best idea. The climax, too, is somewhat protracted, drawing itself out a beat or two longer than strictly necessary, but it lands, more or less, where it ought to.
Why, then, should one persist to the closing credits, given the film’s predictability? The honest answer is: for the happy ending. It arrives without histrionic excess, neither rodomontade nor manipulation in evidence, and it is, in its own modest way, satisfying. If you prefer your cinema brisk and propulsive, Ek Din is not for you. But if you still believe in the old-school virtues — the slow accretion of feeling, the patient unfolding of romance — then there is something here worth your attention. Indeed, the precise contours of the resolution may not be entirely believed by everyone who arrives at it; you will have to watch it to find out.
The title, at least, is wholly justified. Ek Din — One Day — is precisely what the film concerns itself with, and the literalism is earned.
In the final reckoning, Ek Din is a shocking love story constructed atop a lie — and depending on your tolerance for that particular ethical contortion, you will find it either tender or troubling. It is, however, unmistakably streaming fare; this is a film that ought to have arrived on Zee5 rather than in cinemas, where its quieter virtues might have found the audience its theatrical run never managed to.
Verdict: 2 out of 5. For the love, and for Sai Pallavi — if for nothing else.
