Box Office Report: '7 Khoon Maaf' open with mix response: 7 Khoon Maaf opened to mixed response from the audience; critics were also divided in their opinion. It has affected the first weekend business of the film. The murder thriller directed by Vishal Bhardwaj and starring the stunning Priyanka Chopra was expected to be a riveting watch, but the movie has got few takers.
7 Khoon Maaf did an approx business of Rs 10.25-10.50 crore during the weekend. Check out the figures: on Friday the movie could manage a mere Rs 3.30 crore. It picked up to Rs 3.35 crore on Saturday and Rs 3.75 crore approximately on Sunday. Seeing the collections, the trade pundits have raised doubts over the movie’s performance in the coming days. The film might collect Rs 15 crore from its first week. Coming to Patiala House, the movie collected Rs 24.50 crore approx in its first week. Yeh Saali Zindagi had a decent second week of around Rs 3.25 crore approx, taking its two-week total to Rs 10.75 crore. The movie’s performance can be rated below average.
7 Khoon Maaf Review: Jesus! I feel bored to death. There’s no bell tower nearby to rush to and vent my indignation nor any spouse to bump off. And though I don’t exactly feel like being punished for someone else’s sins, I am overwhelmingly disappointed to see that Vishal Bhardwaj -- the bellwether of the herd of new-age Hindi film-makers, the auteur who so convincingly brought the Bard of Avon to the badlands of UP -- has now strayed into mediocrity with so artless and heartless a film as 7 Khoon Maaf, his seventh directorial work certainly not deserving of a pardon.
Based on a short story by Ruskin Bond, the movie tells the tale of a woman named Susanna (Priyanka Chopra) who’s decidedly unfortunate in love and matrimony. In her fatal quest for love, she marries six times and every one of her hubbies turns out to be a rank scumbag: be it a lame chauvinist Major (Neil Nitin Mukesh), a junkie rockstar (John Abraham), a sadomasochistic poet (Irrfan Khan), a Russian double agent (Aleksandr Dyanchenko), a Viagra popping lech (Anu Kapoor), or a money-grubbing, mushroom-loving quack (Naseeruddin Shah). Jesus knows who Susanna’s seventh casualty is for Bhardwaj leaves an open strand in the end and gives the bored viewers a teeny quiz to hair-split. That’s the only intriguing part where you snap out of the slumber but soon see the end credits roll. Granted that a story so episodic as this could not have been told but linearly. But why, pray, is the jumble of Susanna’s matrimonial misadventures reduced to the incessant yo-yoing between her elation at finding the ‘right’ man and her subsequent dejection at the discovery that he’s actually a scumbag. So while the hubbies are kicked to the famished man-eating panthers, or are drug-overdosed, or snake-bitten, or buried alive, or shot point blank, not once does a yawning viewer see a scrap of ingenuity so expected of a Bhardwaj film.
Of course, the bleakly-lit frames and Susanna’s own darkening complexion serve as metaphors to the dark side of her personality, and Bhardwaj does throw in time-references in the tale -- from the falling of the Berlin wall to the Mumbai terror attacks -- but come on, a viewer expects more than such customary symbolism. Even the film’s music gives the impression that its composer (Bhardwaj) was battling a creative block.
A little heart can be taken from the fact that the actors don’t disappoint. Priyanka sinks her teeth into the complex character of Susanna and delivers a performance that makes you forget the film’s flaws for a while. Ditto for Neil, Anu Irrfan and Naseer. Vivaan Shah, who is Susanna’s protégé and the story’s narrator, makes a confident debut.
After hitting the peak with Blood Brothers (a short film I consider Bhardwaj’s best work to date), Vishal has been on a downslide, first marked by the utterly ordinary Kaminey and now cemented by 7 Khoon Maaf. Is the genius of the maverick careening into mediocrity? Was the dream of a bold new Hindi cinema just a chimera?
One thing is for sure. There’s much worthwhile to do with your time than to watch the gloomy tale of an unscrupulous hubby-slaying woman whom you see whirling like a dervish with no less than the Redeemer in the end.
'7 Khoon Maaf', a winning vision by Vishal Bhardwaj- Priyanka Chopra; Chalk up an absolute winner for the Vishal Bhardwaj-Priyanka Chopra team. They make a coherent vision out of an inconceivable marital crises.
How do you make sense of a woman who's an incorrigible potentially-loathsome serial spouse-killer who when challenged about her weird passion for changing husbands by divine decree rather than the law of the land, turns around and says, 'This heart of mine, it's to blame.' Wicked laughter follows. And dammit, we are amused! How does one make head or 'tale' of such a woman? Well, the first thing a director with a canny sense and sensibility does is sign Priyanka Chopra to play the wretchedly unfulfilled, genetically incomplete woman, a living, throbbing warning against the institution of marriage!
Priyanka, not for the first time, proves she is leagues ahead of all competition. She approaches this strange and sensual creature of the night from the outside and then quietly makes inroads into the woman's heart and soul. We can actually see the character's snarled inner-world on Priyanka's face! We don't even know when and how she does it. Priyanka is that kind of a player.
Vishal Bharadwaj has earlier made films about gangs and gangsterism. Every time the dark brooding atmospheric surface seemed to suggest a life of sinister suppressions. Those unspoken, intangible thoughts and visions that often guide a human being to his or her doom are outlined in '7 Khoon Maaf' with supreme poetic elegance.
This is Bhardwaj's most fluidly-narrated film to date. Of course, having Gulzar on board helps. He pens Urdu poetry for Irrfan Khan and rock poetry for John Abraham. For Priyanka poetry is not needed. She creates a kind of indecipherable poetic statement for her deeply dysfunctional character who kills 6 husbands and moves to the 7th at the end of the film with the profound satirical grief of a woman who has discovered that this world has no true love to offer her.
True love...ah! Now that's an idea. At heart Vishal's dark elegiac film is about the search for true love. The relationship that Sussanna (Priyanka) forms with a young boy(Vivaan Shah) as she goes from one husband to another remains at the core of the film. In a macabre subversion of the almost-pure love that Susanna shares with Vivaan's character, at one point in the narration she tries to seduce the boy who's almost like a son. It's a dark ugly moment, almost repugnant in its incestuous resonances but in keeping with the character's insatiable appetite for destruction.
Vishal Bhardwaj brings to the storyboard a deep sense of tragic grandeur even as Susanna slips from self-gratification to delusional spirituality.
Priyanka Chopra has already proved herself way ahead of her contemporaries in her earlier works notably 'Fashion' and 'What's Your Raashee'. In '7 Khoon Maaf' she moves to another level, displaying a range of emotions and age-changes (minus prosthetics) that one last saw in Shabana Azmi's performances.
Priyanka's sequences with Irrfan Khan (playing a gentle poet who transforms into a sexual pervert in bed) are stuff poetic nightmares are made of. We can clearly see the cinematographer (Ranjan Palit) is not in love with the actress, but the character. His camera searches for intransigent images in Susanna's life, even as Priyanka's quest for the character's core takes her into areas of self-expression that are far beyond the reach of cinema acting as we know it.
A. Sreekar Prasad edits the life of Susanna with a surety that, alas,the character never comes close to achieving in her dealings with the opposite sex. Sreekar creates a symphonic seamless movement from one husband to another, sometimes joining segments in Susanna's life with visuals that would otherwise seem incompatible.
The husbands are all played by actors who have no qualms in stripping away their vanity to become the kind of suave but duplicitous untrustworthy spouses who cheat and betray for the sake of the opposite emotion to love. Irrfan Khan as a wolf in poet's clothing, Naseeruddin Shah as the affable old Bengali dietician (his Bengali accent is more dead-on than any true-blue Bengalis) and John Abraham as a stereotypical rock musician gone to poppy-seed, are pitch-perfect in their creating a drama of the callous for Priyanka's character.
But it's Neil Nitin Mukesh as her first legless army-man husband whose display of clenched menace jolts you.
As a storyteller Vishal Bhardwaj has never been more in command of his language. He punctuates Susanna's story with bouts of unexpected humour and poetry. Providentially the murders are committed in ways that appear more humorous than savage. And that's both a good and a bad thing.
The narrative shows a rare understanding of the gender dynamics and the sexual tensions between men and women. Priyanka Chopra's interaction with the unctuous and closet-horny police officer Anu Kapoor delectably illustrates the fable of the Temptress & The Besotted. And by the way Viagara never seemed funnier.
Priyanka Chopra goes from husband-to-husband with a mocking sigh of resigned surrender. She is not a victim. But neither is she the hero of the bizarre web of destruction and delusion that her character weaves around her.
Priyanka Chopra a middle-aged lady in 7 Khoon Maaf?: It takes an elaborate make-up session to change any actor’s age on screen, but to portray an aged character convincingly requires more than just right looks. Priyanka Chopra understood this well while playing a middle-aged woman in 7 Khoon Maaf.
In the movie, Priyanka’s character ages from 20 to 65 as she marries seven husbands in the course of her life. Priyanka says in an interview with a news agency that playing the middle-aged woman was most tough. “It was a challenge that Vishal sir gave me. The transformation is very subtle. I observed the women around me and how they carried themselves in a certain age. There is no drastic change in my character. But the interim period of 40s and 50s when she is not young and not so old was the most difficult but Vishal helped me with that,” Priyanka is quoted to have said.
The 28-year-old said what was particularly difficult was to understand the psyche of a middle-aged lady.
“Ageing was not bad, but for me understanding the psyche of my character was very difficult. I had to portray her in a way that everyone empathises with her despite the fact that she kills seven people without remorse,” she said.
The movie has Priyanka paired with seven actors: Neil Nitin Mukesh, John Abraham, Irrfan Khan, Russian actor Aleksandr Dyachenko, Annu Kapoor, Nasseruddin Shah, and his son Vivaan Shah.
The film, directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, releases on Friday.
Photos - Priyanka Chopra at 7 Khoon Maaf Promotion: Meet Priyanka Chopra, Vishal Bhardwaj, Vivaan Shah (The Son of Naseeruddin Shah), Ronnie Screwvala.
Photos - Priyanka Chopra at 7 Khoon Maaf Promotion
John Abraham decides to boycott the promotion of '7 Khoon Maaf'?: It’s hard to stomach this gossip without a pinch of salt. The buzz is that John Abraham has decided to boycott the promotions of 7 Khoon Maaf because he was being treated on equal footing with other male actors of the film.
Someone not really known for throwing attitude or being professionally insecure, John, the buzz has it, had been expecting, if not unabashedly demanding, preferential treatment from director Vishal Bhardwaj. Since John is the most saleable name among the seven male actors who play Priyanka Chopra’s husbands in the film, the star, reports claim, had been hoping to see himself on the movie’s posters along with Priyanka. But Bhardwaj has been focussing the most on Priyanka while relegating the male actors to the sidelines, something that hasn’t apparently gone down well with John.
So, it’s being reported that he’s decided to boycott the film’s promotions.
The movie stars a host of male actors including Neil Nitin Mukesh, Irrfan Khan, Anu Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah and a Russian actor. 7 Khoon Maaf is slated to release on February 18.
'7 Khoon Maaf' is a Priyanka Chopra's film: Neil Nitin Mukesh: It’s rare to see a Bollywood movie where, despite the presence of seven male actors, it’s the female lead who hogs the limelight. Well, that’s the case with maverick director Vishal Bhardwaj’s upcoming film 7 Khoon Maaf.
Priyanka Chopra is getting all the attention for playing the hubby-slaying wife in the movie that also stars the likes of Neil Nitin Mukesh, John Abraham, Irrfan Khan, Naseeruddin Shah, Anu Kapoor and a Russian actor. Neil, who plays an army Major Rodriques in the film, says the male actors are equally pivotal to the plot.
“So if the girl is important so are her seven husbands. The story would have been incomplete even without one of them. The movie has a great and huge cast,” said Neil.
However, even he couldn’t deny that the movie ultimately belongs to Priyanka.
“Of course it's her film. But we seven husbands are like her support systems. If not for us, whom would she kill!”
Penguin set to launch a book on ‘Saat Khoon Maaf’: Penguin is set to launch a book on Ruskin Bond’s short story ‘Suzanna’s Seven Husbands’, which Bollywood filmmaker Vishal Bharadwaj has adapted into a movie and titled it ‘7 Khoon Maaf’.
‘Penguin will release the book Feb 19. This will help readers know our journey from the short story to the film,’ said Bharadwaj.
‘7 Khoon Maaf’ stars Priyanka Chopra as the protagonist, who kills her seven husbands.
7 Khoon Maaf Music Review: Darrrrling…Vishal Bhardwaj returns with his acoustic treat in 7 Khoon Maaf. This powerhouse of talent is also a terrific music composer, that we all know. Nevertheless, this man never ceases to surprise himself as well as the audience when it comes to his films and their music.
Vishal gets his all-time hit and favourite Gulzar saab to pen the lyrics for 7 Khoon Maaf. Though the film is a murder-thriller, music buffs, including me, were not expecting much from the album. But if it’s Vishal and Gulzar, don’t we know it’s going to be a jewel of a music album. Oops! did we spill the beans! Let’s cut to the chase straightaway. You are guaranteed to get hooked to Darling, the only song currently on promos, but you will be shocked to learn who has sung this incredible number? It’s Usha Uthup, who begins the song with Darrrrling and later the tangy voice of Rekha Bharadwaj takes the song forward. The song takes its time to build the tempo and hence drama. By the time it ends you are into it, drenched in its music. The song is reportedly inspired from the Russian chorus song Kalinka, but it’s not devoid of Indian or Bollywood feel. It won’t be less than an explosion when it comes alive on screen with the feisty Priyanka Chopra crooning this addictive number.
Another version of Darling is more dramatic and romantic in its mood. Rekha and Usha Uthup again get a chance to influence us with their dynamic vocals. Like the original, Doosri Darling is also a delight for your auditory senses.
It’s not always a female voice that entices and beguiles. Here is Vishal Bhardwaj singing Bekaaran and drifting you from this materialistic world to the other realm where only beauty holds meaning. The song, a quasi-ghazal soused in classical music and yet very contemporary, will lure with its beautiful, poetic lyrics. As Gulzar writes, aapko dekh kar bade der se meri sans ruki hai; the song also has same impact, it will take your breath way.
Next in the album is O’ Mama which can sound very disturbing after hearing the Darling and Bekaaran. But as 7 Khoon Maaf is a dark film, songs like this are justified even if its offbeat lyrics and haunting music spook us. But at the same time the song’s distressing mood and its lyrics sounds entertaining and truly rocks us. The O’Mama Acoustic is another version which is restrained and surreal. The small track of just one-and-half minutes, with just the guitar strumming in the background, can smooth your senses after the racy rock beats of the original O’Mama.
The album continues its melancholy strain with Awaara in the voice of Master Saleem which echoes the pathos of a wanderer, his fear of loneliness. Yes, it sounds very much like Albela Sajan from Hum Dil Chuke Sanam, but it’s just because of the raagas.
7 Khoon Maaf throws another shocker: after Usha Uthup you will listen to singer Suresh Wadkar in Tere Liye. This soft number is easy on the ears and is like a typical Vishal number apt for a quiet evening. A must-hear track with words like, Tere liye Kishmish chune, pistey chune, kaaju ke saude kiye. Make believe!!
After Dil Dil Dilli from No One Killed Jessica, it’s the turn of Dil Dil Hai. Yes both the songs rhyme and have got the same rock feel. This number is the only song of the album which lacks the spunk.
Susanna’s prayer Yeshu pierces your heart. She is alone, troubled and has no one to soothe her. Who else than Rekha Bhardwaj to sing this number which is not a church song or a religious one but defines the moment of crisis in the protagonist’s life; she is crying for help to God, yet complaining. The album ends in a serious, sad mood.
As said earlier, Vishal likes to surprise the music buffs and with the somber, dark numbers, he has done it again. Bewildered, we are not going to forgive him for this stupendous 7 Khoon Maaf album.
Saat Khoon Maaf is a black comedy: Actress Priyanka Chopra, who journeys through the life of a woman from her 20s through 65 years of age in her next release ''7 Khoon Maaf'', says the film is a kind of black comedy which Bollywood has not seen in a long time.
" This is not a drama or suspense thriller. There is humour and wickedness.. a black comedy not seen for a long time," Priyanka told reporters here last night. The Vishal Bhardwaj directed film is inspired by Ruskin Bond''s short story, ''Susanna''s Seven Husbands''.
Priyanka described her lead character Susanna as "difficult and complicated." "''7 Khoon..'' is Susanna''s journey to find love. Ageing on screen was the most difficult part. I modelled my older look on the physical appearance of my mother," the 28-year-old actress said. Priyanka said the experience of working with Naseeruddin Shah, Irrfan Khan and Annu Kapoor, who play three of her seven husbands in the movie, was "nerve wrecking". "I had never worked with them before. Annu Kapoor is a friend of my father but I had not worked with him. I did a workshop with Naseeruddin Shah before the film went on floors. I had to learn a lot from Irrfan as an actor," she recalled. "We shot the first schedule with Irrfan where Susanna''s age is 37-40 years. I was so nervous and relied a lot on my director," she said.
The ''Dostana'' star said she was most compatible with John Abraham as she knew him well having done three films together. "I also shared good rapport with Neil Nitin Mukesh and Vivan during the shoot," she said. To a question on initimate scenes in the film, Priyanka said the film was based on marriage. "There can be no marriage without intimacy. Love and pain come with several other emotions. I have tried to enact them to the best of my comfort." . ...
Ruskin Bond expanded his story for Priyanka's ‘Saat Khoon Maaf’: Ruskin Bond, the grand old ’sahib’ from Landour in Mussourie, has been bitten by the tinsel bug. The novelist will make his maiden foray on the big screen with a cameo in Vishal Bhardwaj’s forthcoming ‘Saat Khoon Maaf’, based on his short story ‘Susannah’s Seven Husbands’. ‘I am in the movie. I have told Vishal that I have got a movie part. Don’t you dare cut me out,’ Bond told IANS at the ongoing DSC Jaipur Literature Festival.
This is not Bond’s first movie with filmmaker Bhardwaj. ‘I had earlier collaborated with him in the ‘Blue Umbrella’ which was also based on my story. The story was recommended to Vishal by his wife. I could not work with Bhardwaj on that movie,’ the 76-year-old author said.
Bond has been actively involved in scripting ‘Saat Khoon Maaf’, which stars Priyanka Chopra, unlike a previous screen adaptation of his short story ‘The Flight of Pigeons’ in ‘Junoon’, where he ‘did not even meet the director’.
‘Susannah… was originally a short story comprising a few odd pages. When Vishal decided to turn it into a movie, I expanded the story into an 80-page novella and then began to think in terms of scenes. It became an actual script – a 200-page full-length Hindi script,’ Bond said.
Bond appears in the movie with Priyanka Chopra, who kills ‘each of her seven husbands’.
‘I had to devise regional (Indian) ways of killing the husbands,’ Bond said.
The author believes that movies do justice to literature.
‘I was a great movie-goer as a boy. I had watched some great movies adapted from Charles Dickens’ classics like ‘David Copperfield’, ‘Great Expectations’, ‘Oliver Twist’ and ‘Christmas Carol’. His classics lend themselves to brilliant visual adaptations on screen. Stories by writers like Somerset Maugham and Daphne du Maurier were also made into movies,’ Bond said.
‘My own writing has been influenced by the fact that I went to see the movies and I always thought in terms of visuals,’ he said.
Bond said his ‘fondness for short story as a preferred writing format dates back to his early youth’. ‘One of the reasons why I like writing stories is because when I started writing I had to make a living out of it. Novels could take up to a year,’ he said.
Bond said the sense of perpetual wonder that marked his stories was because he didn’t grow up.
The novelist, who believes in the importance of the oral tradition of story-telling feels that laptops have changed the way children look at stories. ‘They read great stories on the internet. Fantasy has a great appeal today and technology has made inroads into stories,’ he said.
According to Bond, whose books are also steeped in fantasy, ‘the Harry Potter novels had been brilliantly executed and highly successful’.
‘Potter has proved children’s books can outsell adult books and become bestsellers,’ he said.
Born in 1934, the iconic writer of British origin was honoured with the Padma Shri in 1999 for his contribution to children’s literature. He is famous for novellas and short stories like the ‘Room on the Roof’, ‘Night Train at Deoli’, ‘Time Stops at Shamli’, ‘Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra’, and ‘Flight of the Pigeons’.
But what is the master storyteller’s favourite story? Pat comes his reply: ‘Often at night, I am restless and my blanket slips off. An unseen benign hand puts the blanket back on me. It is a very motherly ghost.’
This is a ghost story that Ruskin Bond has never got around to writing. It is his friendly guardian spirit.
Shahid Kapoor reject an offer to do Priyanka Chopra's '7 Khoon Maaf': When Priyanka Chopra has seven co-stars in her forthcoming film “7 Khoon Maaf”, the question arises why isn’t Shahid Kapoor, who shares an amazing onscreen chemistry with her and is reportedly her offscreen love, one of them? Well because he refused, revealed filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj.
"Shahid refused to do the film. That time he was preparing for the role in his father’s film and for that he needed a particular get up, so he didn’t have time to get a new get up for this film,” Bhardwaj told reporters at an event in the Radio City office here. “7 Khoon Maaf” is based on Ruskin Bond’s short story, “Susanna’s Seven Husbands”. The seven male leads in the thriller include Naseeruddin Shah as the oldest husband, John Abraham and Neil Nitin Mukesh, Irrfan Khan, Annu Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah’s youngest son Vivaan Shah as the youngest husband and Russian actor Aleksandr Dyachenko.
The director also revealed that Priyanka was his original choice for the role.
“Priyanka was my original choice for the role. She is the finest actor of her generation right now. Whe I worked with her in 'Kaminey’, I realised how under-utilised she is. She has so much talent in her. As a director I had so much trust on her that I felt that no one else can essay this role as brilliantly as she would do,” said Bhardwaj.
Watch Online 'Bekaraan' video song - Saat Khoon Maaf: Directed by Vishal Bhardwaj and starring Priyanka Chopra in what looks to be another tour de force performance the film, Saat Khoon Maaf, is based on a story by famous author Ruskin Bond. In the drama, Priyanka takes on a negative character and as the title suggests loves her seven, yes, seven husbands to death, literally.
The seven husbands are played by Naseeruddin Shah, John Abraham, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Irrfan Khan, Anu Kapoor, Vivaan Shah and Russian actor Aleksandr Dyachenko.
With each new glimpse of Saat Khoon Maaf, we get intrigued even more and this new promo adds to that 100%. Check out the gorgeous melody of 'Bekaraan'
Priyanka Chopra go on bed with John in 'Saat Khoon Maaf': Vishal Bharadwaj’s ‘Saat Khoon Maaf’ is all about sex, drugs and infidelity. John Abraham shoots a bold scene with his co-star Priyanka Chopra.
John is playing one of the seven husbands of Priyanka. The film has received ‘A’ certificate for the censor board. “Neither Priyanka nor John was awkward during the intimate scenes. They are both very professional,” says a source from the film unit, who did not wish to be named. “This is John Abraham’s boldest role, ever. He plays a hedonistic character.
He is seen bedding multiple partners, and even wears noodle strap tops and satin bows in bed,” adds the source. “We knew right from the beginning that we are making an adult film. The audience is mature, and it is not about specific scenes in the film,” says Vikas Bahl of UTV, the movie’s producers.
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