The irony of a Superstar playing a loser is not lost in Kartik Aaryan's Freddy

In one of the crucial scenes of violence in director Shashanka Ghosh’s Freddy—and be warned, this is a very violent story—Freddy Ginwala, as played by Kartik Aaryan in what is by far his finest performance, is on the floor being kicked mercilessly by a man whom a cop aptly addresses as “Protein Shake”.

So there we have Kartik Aaryan as Freddy on the floor writing, squirming and moaning as  blows are showered  on him by a beefy brainless man, as a woman stands  smirking watching. (Do women really hate violence , or do they enjoy WWE as much as men?).

It takes guts for a huge star like Kartik Aayan to play a  down-and-out loser with no hope of ever finding the  love  that he craves for. Kartik’s portrayal of desolation is near-perfect. His slouch, his slow walk, tentative demeanour and hesitant body language secrete the anxiety anguish and humiliation Freddy faces on a daily basis.

Freddy open with Freddy Ginwala waiting for his date to turns up. She comes, talks briefly and leaves without the bouquet that Freddy has got for her. Another  humiliating rejection. Onlookers on other tables recognize  Freddy as the desperate, dater and desolate dentist whose name never drops off a marriage app. They whisper. They giggle. They mock Freddy.

We soon realize rejection is a way of life for Freddy, like it was for Joaquin Phoenix in The Joker. Kartik Aaryan walks on the dark side of the moon without  inhibition. His is aware he is going into uncharted  territory. But he sinks deep into the morass of Freddy’s doom. Shashanka Ghosh’s Freddy is a mournful  meditation on loneliness, a desolation so desperate it  prompts an individual to plumb to the darkest zone in his soul, hoping to find at least some light. Alaya F plays the kind of treacherous seductress who adds a new dimension to screen vamping. Her portrayal is borderline-misogynistic. She  is Kainaaz  Irani an abused wife  who visits her neighbourhood dentist and falls for his disarmingly awkward charms…and that’s the whole tooth.

It is the second woman  I saw this  week portrayed with not  a shred of empathy. In the Telugu Adivi Sesh starrer Hit: The Second Case, there is a salient woman character who cheats on her saintly husband and when he catches her red handed, she accuses him of marital rape.

Freddy is not as much a victim of a treacherous woman as a doomed victim of destiny. He is  a  born loser  and  the  more he  lives, the more he  faces the truth: love happiness and other joys are meant for others.  Freddy’s story is  not a pretty one. It gets progressively dark and gruesome.  Finally what we see is  a  man so tortured  by life that he  loses all sense of right  and wrong.

The Parsi community where the story is set makes all the macabre moves in Freddy’s life all the more  incredible. This could not be happening to people who  never raise their voices, never abuse,  never complain unless it is about the noise  outside their building made by kids playing cricket.

Freddy constructs a disturbing discrepant world. It is a clever premise built on the hope that the hopeless hero will get the revenge he wants. But there is no satisfaction or vindication at the end. Only a pool of gruesome violence and blood.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.

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