Lord Curzon Ki Haveli, directed by Anshuman Jha, struggles as a murder mystery with shallow character development and poor staging.
Lord Curzon Ki Haveli movie review
Rating: ★★
Director: Anshuman Jha
Cast: Rasika Dugal, Arjun Mathur, Zoha Rahman, Paresh Pahuja, Tanmay Dhanania
Twenty minutes into Lord Curzon Ki Haveli, I found myself questioning the point of it all. The film opens by thanking Beethoven, but what follows feels more like cacophony than symphony. Murder mysteries are a tricky genre, especially today when OTT has overexposed us to content from around the world. To keep viewers distracted enough to not be able to guess the killer till the end, is a tall order for any whodunit.
What is the plot?
The story here revolves around a couple, Rohit (Arjun Mathur) and Sanya (Zoha Rahman), who invite her friend Ira (Rasika Dugal) and her husband Basuki Nath (Paresh Pahuja) over for drinks. Basuki soon goes berserk, convinced the hosts are hiding something in a trunk. The evening turns darker with each passing moment, and that’s pretty much the story.
The film would like us to believe it is more intelligent than it really is. Anshuman Jha, in his directorial debut, has called this a black comedy. I kept waiting for anything to actually crack me up. There is no satire or edgy humour at play here- or if there is, it was lost on me.
The problem begins with the staging of the scenes. It feels more like a theatre play than a feature film. The actors stick to what feels like two-line character sketches etched out by the director, never adding any layers to them. In its two-hour runtime, Lord Curzon Ki Haveli drifts from mystery to drama to murder mystery, but what it doesn’t quite deliver is actual mystery.
The abruptness at select places is jarring. Paresh’s character suddenly becomes obsessed with the trunk and resorts to criminal behaviour simply because he hears a knock from inside it. His equation with his wife is also poorly established.
Weak second half: And it all fell apart
More plot points fall apart in the second half. The cinematography adds little, with the entire film shot inside a single house. The music only consists of Beethoven’s symphony playing in bits and pieces.
In the performance department, the film doesn’t know what to do with it’s talented bunch. Rasika is reliable, as usual, but her character trajectory doesn’t excite you as a viewer. Pure shock value seems to be the writer and director’s motive, and that doesn’t bode well ultimately.
Arjun Mathur doesn’t have scope to do much in a role which requires not a lot from him. Paresh’s entire character arc is one only consisting of an accent more British than the Britishers themselves. The role could have done with some more intensity. What I didn’t see coming was the attempt to link the plot to racial discrimination somehow!
In the end, Lord Curzon Ki Haveli feels like a missed opportunity, an idea that could have been a taut chamber drama but ends up overstaying its welcome. What was meant to be unsettling instead comes off as hollow. A strong cast and Beethoven’s name on the credits deserved far more than a film that mistakes shock for substance. Sometimes, mystery is not about what’s in the trunk, but what’s missing from the story.
