NO SMOKING has no story to tell

Plainly put, No Smoking is about a chain smoker K (John Abraham) and his rather dubious tryst with a certain Baba Bengali Sealdahwale (Paresh Rawal) who claims to run a rehabilitation centre. Ayesha Takia plays Anjali, K's pretty wife who is sick of her husband's insensitivity and smoking. It is when she finally leaves him that K requests his friend Abbas (Ranvir Shorey) to take an appointment with the 'rehab Baba'. The Baba in turn forces him to sign a contract, a cheque of a heavy amount and warns him against smoking. Not the one to pay heed to these seemingly flimsy things, K refuses to change his ways. But with each cigarette, his life turns into a living nightmare.

What we liked about the film

Watching No Smoking is like watching a great existentialist play on a 70 mm screen. Add a lot of John Abraham (who, by they way, has a many bare-chested scenes here) to the script and you wouldn't be complaining about its abstract nature. Smoking here becomes a metaphor for the human existence; and K's vain attempts at quitting seem to reflect an individual's hollow desire to get out of the rut. Like life then, the 'plot' of this film isn't linear in progression. It goes back and forth and comes around the whole circle but doesn't necessarily complete the circumference.

The crisp dialogues complement John's character, K who is a megalomaniac. For instance when Anjali asks him for a divorce, K promptly replies, "Sorry, budget nahi hai!" Also the little in-jokes on which the industrywallahs would have a hearty laugh are quite significant. There is a scene where Abbas (Ranvir) is asked his full name. In response, the scrawny fellow replies, "Abbas… Abbas Tyrewalla."

What we didn't like about the film

Although one may have liked the whole idea of a non-linear plot, it isn't something that is commercially viable. For a country that has grown up watching a particular kind of cinema, No Smoking comes as 'too arty' a film. Anurag Kashyap's last film Black Friday worked partly because it had a story to tell.