Three memorable performances from the last decade

2. Kartik Aaryan in ‘Akash Vani’: In one of the film’s high dramatic moments shot on a small deserted railway station in the night, the film’s protagonists, now estranged byan unfortunate series of circumstances, sit on the bench and…well, they sob. Yes, they simply cry their hearts out. First, the girl. Then in a melancholic celebration of the me-too syndrome, the boy, now alas no longer a boy (and he smokes to prove it) also breaks into little sobs that build up into a wail as the shehnai, indicative ofa cruel marital joke, plays in the background.

The sequence in the hands of a lesser director would have fallen flat on its sobbing face. Luv Ranjan has the punch-filled boys-will-be-boys saga Pyaar Ka Punchnaama behind him to prove his solid grip over the grammar of the hearts of the young and the confused. This is Kartik Aryan’s mosthonest performance to date. Luv Ranjan’s screenplay takes the lovers from the corny escapades and frigid philosophizing of the college campus to the precipice of heartbreak.

Unlike other contemporary celluloid raconteurs, Ranjan is not fearful of silences. He doesn’t fill up every conceivable nook and corner of the storytelling with words and music.On many occasions Ranjan allows the lead pair to share silences–a rarity in today’s cinema. Though the filmbelongs to the female protagonist, Kartik manages to hold his own with an endearing performance far removed from what he attempted in the director’s Pyaar Ka Punchnaama.