Kedarnath: Why people are eager to watch the film

Abhishek Kapoor’s film Kedarnath is ready to release this Friday and petitions have been filed against its release too alleging that the film hurts religious sentiments. It is very curious how people approach the court without even watching the film and judging it with just a trailer!

However, there are certain things which make audiences look forward to this film:

• Intensely passionate  vibes between the two protagonists. Debutante Sara Ali Khan has apparently given her ‘veteran’ costar Sushant Singh Rajput a run for his money. Besides three words in their names, Sushant and Sara share another  important trait. They are very competitive.
• The love story unfolds in  the  midst of  a pilgrimage. No Hindi film has equated  spiritual and romantic  love  before this.Love is  perceived  as religion inKedarnath.
• Sara Ali Khan will be  a star after the release of Kedarnath. She was intensely involved in the process of creating the character of a Hindu girl on a teerth yatra who falls for  the Muslim chap who ferries her across the mountain.The peak is reached  in unexpected ways.
• Sushant loves to get into the method-actor mode. He actually learnt  to  carry  pilgrims as a pithoo. After the back-breaking task his back was ready  to  give up. His determination was  not affected, though.
• This  is  not the first time Sushant  plays a Muslim in love with a  Hindu girl. In his rather  memorable guest appearance  in Raj Kumar Hirani’s PK he played a Pakistani  who falls in  love with an Indian girl.

• Director Abhishek Kapoor   has worked  a certain magic with Sushant  in Kai Po Che, the film with which  Sushant made his successful  transition from television to cinema. Thereafter they fell out. Kapoor did the ambitious Fitoor with Aditya Roy Kapoor. Now when the director is back with Sushant there is magic in the air once again.
• No other recent mainstream Hindi film has been shot in Kedarnath. Ironically the  priests of Kedarnath are up in arms against the film when in fact Abhishek Kapoor has paid the most handsome homage to the spirit of the teerth dham.
• Unconfirmed rumours insist Sushant remained a celibate during the making  of  Kedarnath  to evoke a feeling of religious purity within himself. If true, then all we can say is, it may be time for the celibate to celebrate this Friday.