October

Please sign in to review.

• Nuwan Anuradha 2025-10-26 18:13:21

  There are stories that rush; October breathes. It unfolds like a slow dawn, quiet and unsure, where emotion lives not in grand gestures but in pauses, glances, and the silence between two heartbeats. The film begins with Dan, a hotel management trainee played by Varun Dhawan, who drifts through life without urgency or plan. He jokes with friends, skips responsibilities, and treats every day as an interruption rather than a path. His world is a blur of uniforms, shift schedules, and the mechanical politeness of hospitality. Then, without warning, a single event fractures the rhythm of his careless existence. Shiuli, his fellow trainee — gentle, focused, and calm — meets with an accident that leaves her in a coma. From that moment, the film changes course, and so does Dan’s life.
  
  What begins as curiosity turns into obsession, and obsession deepens into something wordless yet pure. Dan starts visiting Shiuli in the hospital, asking about her condition, rearranging his schedule to be near her, talking to her family as though they share an unspoken bond. There is no declaration of love, no cinematic outburst, only a quiet devotion that seeps into his every choice. He brings flowers, changes sheets, notices small improvements others overlook. Life outside continues — his friends move on, his job shifts — but Dan is suspended in time, orbiting around a still figure who cannot speak. The film’s title, October, symbolizes transience: the slow fall of leaves, the beauty of things that fade, the fragility of time itself.
  
  Shoojit Sircar’s direction finds beauty in stillness, letting nature mirror emotion — the sway of trees, the hum of hospital machines, the faint light filtering through curtains. Varun Dhawan delivers a performance stripped of glamour, raw in its vulnerability. Banita Sandhu, even in silence, becomes the center of gravity, her stillness echoing the life force that keeps Dan awake through nights of uncertainty. The cinematography by Avik Mukhopadhyay frames every moment like memory: washed tones, tender focus, endless sky. The score, composed by Shantanu Moitra, barely intrudes; it breathes alongside the story, whispering emotion instead of dictating it. As months turn, Shiuli’s body begins to respond faintly — a finger twitch, a blink — and Dan clings to hope as if it were oxygen. Yet the film resists sentimentality. It does not chase miracles; it contemplates endurance. October becomes a meditation on love without possession, care without demand, and connection without expectation. When the inevitable end comes, it isn’t tragedy that overwhelms — it’s acceptance. The final sequences, filled with wind, trees, and silence, remind viewers that love can exist beyond recognition, beyond presence, beyond language.
  
  By its close, October redefines what romance in cinema can be: not fireworks, but breath; not confession, but care; not victory, but grace. It’s a story of how one life can awaken another, how purpose can grow from pain, and how love sometimes means simply showing up. The final shot lingers on nature reborn — spring after autumn, life after letting go. October leaves behind not heartbreak but stillness, an aftertaste of peace that feels both haunting and healing.

  12 7