{"id":2411,"date":"2016-04-23T08:54:47","date_gmt":"2016-04-23T03:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=2411"},"modified":"2026-07-17T20:02:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T14:32:30","slug":"october-movie-review-varun-dhawan-shoojit-sircar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=2411","title":{"rendered":"October: The Art of Surviving With the Guilt of Living"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“W<\/span><\/p><\/div>

here is Dan?\u201d\n\nOctober\u2019s <\/em>lead Shiuli Iyer (newcomer Banita Sandhu) utters these three words right before falling into a pool of blood from the third floor of the hotel<\/a> she works at. It is these three words that captivate the complete attention of her colleague, the 21-year-old Dan (a surprisingly affecting Varun Dhawan), and hold him ransom.\n\nPrior to that night, forever sullied by Dan\u2019s absence and Shiuli\u2019s misfortune, she was an afterthought in his monotonous life. A hotel management trainee at a five-star hotel, Dan is disgruntled and misguidedly ambitious at the same time. Too restless to work his way up the ladder, he doesn\u2019t see the point in being put on laundry duty or vacuuming the third floor for the umpteenth time. For his dreams are bigger: Working in the hotel\u2019s kitchen <\/a>(because he can chop really well), the bar (\u201cI make cocktails for my dad. They\u2019re really nice\u201d), or opening a restaurant with two of his friends. \n\nTaking what he believes is his rightful place at the front desk, at the kitchen, and at the bar, is 20-year-old Shiuli, the junior he detests, whose advances he rejects, and whose invested obedience makes him stand out like a sore thumb. Dan puts her down in every way, so it\u2019s ironic that it\u2019s him who is a regular visitor at Venkateshwar Hospital <\/a>where Shiuli lies in a coma held together by an army of pipes. It\u2019s a remarkable transition of a man who rebels against being a paid caretaker, into an unpaid caregiver; the drifter finally building a home.\n\nDan is eaten away by the preoccupation that his absence might have put Shiuli in harm\u2019s way. At first, his survivor\u2019s guilt manifests in him drowning in utter obsession. He starts visiting her daily, routinely skipping work, harassing the doctors to ensure her well-being. It comes to a point where Dan remains as much of a presence at Shiuli\u2019s bed as her family, comprising her distraught but resilient mother Vidya (a fine Gitanjali Rao) and two siblings. \n\n\"October\"\n

\n

A hotel management trainee at a five-star hotel, Varun Dhawan’s Dan is disgruntled and misguidedly ambitious at the same time. <\/p>\n

Image credit: Rising Sun Productions<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nOn more than one occasion, he vehemently urges her mother<\/a> to not give up and pull the plug on her daughter<\/a> (faintly reminiscent of another Juhi Chaturvedi-Shoojit Sircar character, Bhaskor Banerjee in Piku<\/em> who begs his daughter to not put him on the ventilator). Even after multiple warnings, his guilt-induced temper gets the better of him as he hits a colleague at the hotel. Soon after, he is thrown out of the hotel and the course, putting his diploma in jeopardy. But even that life-altering loss is hardly enough to deter him from being glued to Shiuli\u2019s side at the hospital. \n\nIn the process, it also opens the door to his (manufactured) feeling of unconditional love <\/a>for her, reciprocating what she might have felt before her accident and starting off a romance that has very little time. But his guilt also metamorphoses into narcissistic selfishness; where he wants as much validation for his sacrifice as anyone else, sticking a picture of him for her to remember on the bed.\n\nAs the seasons change, and winter slowly makes way for autumn, Dan also strikes an unlikely friendship with Shiuli\u2019s single mother. Their lives are intertwined by unspeakable tragedy, but it is also their presence that is the other\u2019s balm, much like Shiv and Tara in Anu Menon\u2019s Waiting<\/em>. \n\nLike Dan, even Shiv (Naseeruddin Shah) harbours a deep guilt of being away while his wife suffered a stroke and tragically lay undiscovered for hours. It chews at his conscience, disguising its presence as dutiful commitment toward his bedridden wife, the same way Dan remains committed to staying by Shiuli\u2019s side. To the outside world, people like Shiv and Dan are an anomaly; they\u2019re even branded crazy for their striking optimism and thankless sacrifices. But, to themselves, they\u2019re ordinary sinners, fervently hoping their penance rids them of their guilt.\n\n

By clinging on too hard, Dan manages to let go.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n \nIn spelling out this delicate dance of mourning and guilt, the dream-team of Sircar and Chaturvedi paints a very affecting portrait of grief<\/a>, one that acknowledges and encompasses a sacrosanct stage of the grieving process: survivor\u2019s guilt. Every frame of October<\/em> has this autumnal feeling hanging over it. \n\nIt\u2019s a stage of grieving (and healing) that rarely finds its way to the big screen, save for rare appearances in films like Waiting <\/em>and Ghar<\/em>, where newly-weds Vikas and Aarti are left to rebuild their bond after Aarti is violently gang-raped<\/a>. In the film, Vikas deals with his guilt by alienating himself. His selfishness of isolating himself comes at the cost of his relationship, even when he remains aware that his selflessness might be Aarti\u2019s only remedy. He chooses to indulge his narcissism until the very end when he runs to the train station to stop his wife from leaving.\n\nWhile October\u2019s<\/em> portrayal of the escalating shades of survivor\u2019s guilt stops short of veering into dangerous territory, Asghar Farhadi\u2019s The Salesman<\/em> captures its unmasked brutality. Like in Ghar, the couple in the film survive a traumatic sexual assault that results in distancing them. While the wife goes into her shell recuperating from her assault, her husband wallows in his guilt, milking it as a justifiable excuse to explore the violent monster inside him. As the film nears its end, the roles are reversed: He is as much a sinner as his wife\u2019s perpetrator by allowing the guilt to overpower the gravity of the crime.\n\nHowever, unlike them, the guilt that Vidya and Dan harbour goes from being a secret to a remedy that awakens them, matures them, and fosters the process of healing and moving on. By clinging on too hard, they manage to let go. Sircar\u2019s October pits these myriad faces of guilt against the backdrop of the quotidian, bringing to life a film that ends with a thought that is as dispiriting as it is hopeful.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shoojit Sircar and Juhi Chaturvedi\u2019s October paints a very affecting portrait of bereavement that acknowledges a stage of the grieving process that is rarely discussed on screen: survivor\u2019s guilt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":2414,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3114],"tags":[4900,4901,4902,4903,4904,4905,4906,1161],"class_list":["post-2411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bollywood","tag-banita-sandhu","tag-juhi-chaturvedi","tag-october","tag-october-movie-review","tag-october-review","tag-shoojit-sircar","tag-survival-guilt","tag-varun-dhawan"],"yoast_head":"\nOctober: The Art of Surviving With the Guilt of Living<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Shoojit Sircar and Juhi Chaturvedi\u2019s October paints a very affecting portrait of bereavement that acknowledges a stage 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