Dobaaraa is being talked about as Anurag Kashyap’s first remake/ adaptation in a career spanning close to three decades. “But Mirage (the original Spanish film) hadn’t even released when I started making Dobaaraa. I worked out of a script like any other film,” Anurag told me during a special screening of his film in Calcutta on Thursday evening. Kashyap isn’t claiming to be original... Dobaaraa is definitely an adaptation of Mirage, the rights for which were duly bought by the film’s producers. But having watched both films, I can safely say that though Dobaaraa stays true to the core of Mirage, Kashyap makes the film his own. He betters the original in parts, but also falters.

Exploring themes of parallel universes, portals opening into other worlds and the implications of a rift in the time-space continuum, the film-maker — aided by a blistering act from Taapsee Pannu — fashions an intricate sci-fi thriller that also weaves in strong human emotions through failed relationships, infidelity and dysfunctional father-child equations.

Dobaaraa transposes the action to Hinjawadi, on the outskirts of Pune, from Berlin in the original. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 had a historical implication on the goings-on in Mirage, but Dobaaraa steers clear of infusing its plot with any such references. The year is 2021 and Antara (Taapsee) has moved into her new home with her husband (Rahul Bhat) and their six-year-old daughter. They quickly learn that it’s a house with a history, and a decrepit television set, with the video of a boy — who lived in the same house 25 years ago and met with a tragic death — reinforces that. A geomagnetic storm is brewing outside — similar to what happened a quarter of a century to the day — and unwittingly using the TV set as a portal, Antara connects to the young boy Anay. She changes the past — and hence his destiny — but also inadvertently alters her own present in the bargain, waking up in a parallel universe that’s completely alien. From then on, aided by a cop (Pavail Gulati), who believes her even when no one does, Antara tries to piece together the jigsaw puzzle that her life (or rather, lives) has become.

Employing theories like The Butterfly Effect (small changes resulting in much bigger implications) and Schrodinger’s Cat (the same entity being both dead and alive in alternate realities), Dobaaraa is intelligently crafted and demands your complete attention. Time and time-travel are not only intrinsically linked to the theme of the film, its title is also a homonym, connected to both a momentous hour (2:12, meaning ‘dobaara’) in the story and also a clever play on second chances.

More nuanced and detailed than the original, Dobaaraa has the two timelines — separated by 25 years — playing out parallelly, which makes it more comprehensible and less cryptic than Mirage. However, it relies more on slow-burn than the frenetic pace that a story like this perhaps demanded. But rich atmospherics and Kashyap’s homage to his favourites — Terminator to Christopher Nolan, and even a bit of Stranger Things and quite a bit of Dark — lend themselves favourably to the film. The overpowering background score, created by the aptly named Shor Police, is a definite downer.

Strong performances led by Taapsee and also featuring a sublime Saswata Chatterjee and the always dependable Nassar and Anurag Kashyap having fun with an un-Kashyap-like film is what make Dobaara worth a watch. It will perhaps act as a catalyst for Bollywood to attempt more films in this genre.

Dobaaraa (u/a)

Director: Anurag Kashyap

Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Pavail Gulati, Rahul Bhat, Nassar, Saswata Chatterjee, Himanshi Choudhry

Running time: 132 minutes