Anurag Basu’s Movie Life in a Metro, which was released in 2007, completes 15 years.
This year is the 15th anniversary of Anurag Basu’s Life in a… Metro, which stars Shilpa Shetty Kundra, Shiney Ahuja, Kay Kay Menon, Kangana Ranaut, Sharman Joshi, and Irrfan Khan. The musical drama, which followed the lives of nine people, dealt with subjects such as love, old age, and marriage.
Life in a Metro has various aspects that make it a memorable watch. Pritam rose to prominence thanks to his soulful music CD. The finesse with which it weaves together six stories of love, want, and loneliness against the backdrop of the ever-changing, always-moving Mumbai—a city that, as Dharmendra’s character ruminates at the end, takes a lot more out of its characters than it gives them.
Most significantly, it allows all of its characters—especially women—enough space and struggle to come undone, regroup themselves, and start over despite their short screen time.
In their golden years, an elderly couple tries to reignite their first love. A young couple is stuck in a loveless relationship. Meanwhile, we have an ambitious husband, a lady willing to make sacrifices in order to advance in her career, and a woman looking for a meaningful relationship.
Despite the fact that each character lives in the same town but has a unique personality, they are linked in such a way that each story narrative would be completed without the other. So, what ties each story together is each character’s desire and expectations of one another.
The main characters and the target audience share a strong emotional bond, making it a bittersweet homage to Mumbai and its people. Life in a Metro tells stories that we haven’t seen before. The film has a melancholy undercurrent as well as a sense of familiarity.
Even when it shows its characters at their most vulnerable, it has the right heart. Many people may wonder why they should pay attention to persons they meet on a daily basis.
Anurag Basu keeps the tale from becoming preachy. For example: When Irrfan begs Konkana to scream her heart out to let go of the pain, you feel pinched inside. You laugh your heart out when he tells Konkana that she will not fit into his handcrafted bridal gown (petticoat).
Anurag modified Shilpa Shetty’s story while filming, according to the actor, who played a homemaker stuck in a loveless marriage. Her character was scheduled to continue with her lover Akash, played by Shiney, according to the original script.
In the film, however, she abandons him in favor of her husband, played by Menon. “The end to my track with Shiney was supposed to be happy… as in I leave with him… that is what was narrated to me..but on location Anurag was against shooting it,” Shilpa reveals.
However, she believes that her character benefited from the modification. “After a lot of thinking, he (Anurag) changed the climax on location, making me go back to my daughter.
He said most Indian women would do just that — try to make that compromise and kill their own feelings for their child. So true. That’s why that character works,” Shilpa explains.
Pritam’s music and the way his band appears at key plot points, breaking the fourth wall and portraying the characters’ enjoyment or pain, was a beautiful detail of the film.
Anurag Basu was said to be working on a sequel as well. Irrfan Khan had pushed him to write the next part, he stated in a prior interview.
“Metro 2 is on top of my bucket list. The other day I had an internal meeting with my team of assistants and all, where I read them three new scripts of mine and the first question, I received from them was when I am doing Metro 2. So, internally also, everybody in my team thinks that I should start writing Metro 2 as my next, but I don’t know.”
Published By: Sachin Sonawane
