Some movies feels like a distinct aching memory with feels like reality Metro In Dino is such a film its raw real authentic and deeply rooted and emotional. The film doesn’t draw a forced dramatic picture but it is breath organically and allows audience to relate with it with its characters and their flawed yet relatable intellect and lives. The film parts with one simple notion what if you simply paused and felt?
The Bengali showman Anurag Basu is back with his signature touch weaving an authentic tales by intertwining lives across a shared emotional map but this time it’s more subtle and reflective. A spiritual follow-up to Life in a Metro trades intensity for intimacy and offers something we have never seen before or felt before!
The film flows through several stories: Monty (Pankaj) and Kajol (Konkona) live in a marriage worn thin by time. Kajol’s mother Shibani (Neena Gupta) is full of laughter on the outside but inside years of being sidelined weigh her down.
Akash (Ali Fazal) and Shruti (Fatima Sana Shaikh) portray a love fraying at the edges stretched too far by distance and disappointment. And amid this beautifully fractured ensemble we meet Chumki (Sara Ali Khan) and Parth (Aditya Roy Kapur) strangers caught in an unpredictable equation of mistrust and maybe-love.
The entire ensemble is rich and seasoned but it’s the Sara Ali Khan who steal the show with her transformative role. She plays the role of Chumki a young woman navigating her path through emotional fog she is hesitant guarded yet yearning. She offers a whole different texture and grit for her role that looks raw real and authentic a long departure from her vibrant and energetic previous roles. She bring an eerie silence poise and longing to her role that feels so soul-stirring. She eyes does the talking her impactful moments aren’t loud they are painfully real and lands perfectly. At times she says nothing and her silence is deafening on-screen.
The music of the film is outstanding and brilliant Pritam’s music flow like thoughts carrying the narrative and emotion forward they don’t interrupt scenes — they become part of their being.
The emotional landscape and dealing in the film is the real winner characters unspoken generational trauma midlife crisis tired hope and loneliness everything feels heartbreakingly familiar and real. The performances are outstanding and brilliant but Sara Ali Khan shines above everyone else!
The first half is quick but the film slows down in the second half and some stories land harder than others this intentional narrative trick doesn’t feels less like a flaw and more like life itself which is unpredictable unresolved and always in moving forward.
The film is far from being a spectacle it is a slow dance with reality and allows you to feel and breath with it the film may not change your life but it might remind you of something you forgot along the way. And if you’re still wondering whether Sara Ali Khan can surprise you — this film is your quiet yes.