It was love at first sight when Rahul met Anjali. Like Shahrukh and Kajol in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, they meet in college. While rushing for class, he sees her and stops, stunned. She sees him too, a little surprised and confused by his attention. To the film and actor’s credit, her expression can be read as the beginning of a love story and also as a women being creeped out by a strange man leering her.
Years later, Rahul has decided to stab Anjali to death, and approaches her as she spends some some quite moments with her boyfriend. The entire film seems to take place in the mind of Rahul as he walks towards her with a knife in his hand. This is a sick and twisted mind, filled with self-loathing and impotent rage, ironic detachment and distractions, Obama and Shah Rukh, and memories of his love affair with Anjali, which the film hints are just stories he is telling himself. He projects all of this on Anjali, and when she can’t play the part anymore, he has to kill her.
The team here collectively does a superb job of bringing this mind to life. And the film finds a strange and hypnotic rhythm of its own by using repetition and cross-cutting overlaid with voice-over and distortions. The cinematography hides nothing, the city is exactly like Rahul sees it, lonely and dirty with the girl being the only beautiful thing in it.