Kapoor ditches many of the overarching social themes of Great Expectations to focus on what is primarily the story of star-crossed lovers and a complex romance. Fitoor isnt perfect, but its a skillfully made film thats easy on both the eye and the ear. In these times of fast-paced, hyperactive storytelling, you can appreciate the films dreamy, moody pace. Im going with three out of five.

Fitoor doesn’t dive beyond the surface though, its story’s shikara paddling along pretty Kashmir, but never tearing its way to its violent, wailing heart like Haider, its art stuck in a banal Mediterranean restaurant-like world, never conveying the lonely powers of love. You get style – including six-pack Noor painting shirtless (explains why artists score more – can you imagine writers taking their tops off to work?) – but little depth. To play with a great quote, oh what a tangled web we weave, when we learn to retrieve – in this case, retrieving a classic indeed caused a tangle, albeit one of Pashmina dhaagas.

On the whole, Fitoor is very slow and confusing too. Rather than happiness, it sells depression. It may be liked by a section of the class audience but it will be rejected by the masses and will, therefore, prove to be a box-office disaster, entailing a huge loss to all concerned.

The problem with Fitoor is that it’s a love story that is not romantically compelling. The climax seems too rushed it needed more drama and emotional depth but that’s missing. What to do: It’s Valentines Week and if you are in the mood for a complex love story, check this one out.

The director casts two attractive people where he ought have chosen a couple of actual actors instead, and thus it becomes hard to care about the protagonists or their sundered hearts, and despite aesthetic appeal, what we end up with is — at best — a screensaver

Inspiration Charles Dickens is just the first casualty. Fitoor spares no one, not Kashmir, not Delhi, not London, not Kashmiris, and not even poor Pakistan, which somehow finds its way into this tale essentially about love traversing social divides.

Fitoor ticks the first two boxes emphatically. It is packaged brilliantly. It also has epic sweep. But in respect of context, it falls well shy of perfection. The screenplay sets the classic Dickensian tale in captivating Kashmir but is unable to justify the choice of location beyond projecting the hauntingly desirable heroine as a metaphor for a paradise torn between conflicting forces. Despite that failing, Fitoor succeeds in turning a literary classic into a contemporary cinematic feast for the eyes and the senses.Go for it because there might not be too many better films than Fitoor this year.

Fitoor, for all its spellbinding beauty, fumbles bad. The story meanders and loses way in between, and there seems a certain urgency in tying all the loose ends. Major revelations in this bildungsroman are condensed into a mere span of a few minutes, and it doesn’t quite achieve the desired effect. On the other hand, several intense sequences are dulled by their prolixity. At the end of the day, Fitoor demands a lot of patience on the part of the viewer. But that is largely made up for by Kashmir. Watch the film for its sheer beauty.

What pulls the film down is its pace. Not many can endure a love story that stretches for this long. Consider this as your holy grail and remember that if you are not a person who enjoys larger than life romances which have an artsy feel, you certainly cannot watch it. For me, the film struck a nerve somewhere. This is like another Lootera for me, love the raw, simplistic nature of love in it.

There are moments in Fitoor which are brilliant, but they are few and far between. But what elevates the film greatly is music composer Amit Trivedis haunting score. His potent music makes the young lovers yearning real and legitimate. Watch this if you want to see a visually stunning piece of filmmaking, but if you are looking for an intense love story, you are barking up the wrong chinar tree.

Fitoor is a staggeringly beautiful canvas, but nothing else.Its possibly the most pretentious love stories weve seen so far.Fitoor has moments of truth, pain and madness, emoted commendably by the celebrated Tabu, but for most parts its unsure about what to do.Great Expectations is an ambitious story to adapt to Bollywood, no doubt, but one that Abhishek has wasted.