Jaane Jaan: Sujoy Ghosh’s thrilling Netflix film isn’t devoted to Suspect X’s original ending, and that’s a good thing

There’s presumably a pressure on directors to deliver a palatable experience to audiences; few Bollywood filmmakers have the courage to turn in stuff like, say, That Girl in Yellow Boots or Gurgaon. And Jaane Jaan is, before we forget, a mainstream film featuring not only the single most popular Hindi movie heroine of her generation, but also two genuine streaming era stars. And they’re all excellent in it. Kapoor Khan plays Maya D’Souza, a single mother living in Kalimpong with her teenage daughter; Ahlawat plays her neighbour Naren, a local high school maths teacher who quietly harbours intense feelings for her; and Varma plays a rakish cop named Karan, who shows up at the spooky hill station looking for a crooked colleague that turns up dead.

Karan discovers that the elusive colleague was married in a past life to Maya, who immediately becomes suspect number one in the murder investigation. Karan also recognises Naren as his old college buddy, and insists on catching up with him, even when it’s obvious that Naren would rather be sentenced to a lifetime of counting on his fingers than chill with him for even one minute.

There’s a terrific scene midway through the film in which Karan invites himself into Naren’s house, and the subtext that Varma and Ahlawat are able to convey about their complex relationship, purely through conversation, is a testament to their formidable talent. Meanwhile, watching Kapoor Khan in the film’s early domestic moments, you’d think that she’s never known international fame at all; that’s how effortless she is in those scenes. But she can also tap into that iconic inbuilt stardom at a moment’s notice, and this is evident in that sizzling scene where Maya and Karan go to a karaoke bar and sense a spark.

But I digress… The ending. In the film’s final moments, it is revealed that Naren, in order to keep Maya and her daughter safe from harm, had orchestrated a cover-up that would end with his own arrest. When Maya discovers the extent of his sacrifice for her, she is stunned speechless. Naren tells her from behind bars that he was on the verge of suicide the day they first met, and that their chance encounter reconnected him with his first love, maths. He reassures her that she needn’t worry about him, and that he’d keep himself occupied in jail, busy tackling a maths problem that would probably take him over a decade to solve. A rattled Maya helplessly accepts his decision, and is dragged away from Naren’s cell by Karan, presumably to live happily ever after.

In the book, however, the teacher Ishigami concocts a similar scheme, but the single mother Yasuko’s reaction to it couldn’t be more different. Burdened by the guilt of Ishigami’s sacrifice, she comes clean to the detective, and implicates not only herself, but also her daughter Misako. A gutted Ishigami is informed of Yasuko’s confession, and on the final page, he lets out what is described as a “long, roaring howl like that of a beast; a cry of confusion and desperation; a cry that tore at the hearts of all who heard it.”

Ishigami didn’t take the fall for Yasuko because of maths; he took the fall because he genuinely loved her. He was a creep about it, yes, but so is Naren. In several interviews leading up to Jaane Jaan’s release, Ghosh said that their love story was what he responded to most strongly after reading the book, to the point that he didn’t see it as a murder mystery at all. Which begs the question: why did he dilute Naren’s feelings for Maya by introducing the maths angle? She was always unattainable, but being in the company of his beloved mathematics for 15 years is a pretty great consolation prize for someone like him. Unlike Ishigami and Yasuko, who were cursed to live the rest of their days under tremendous guilt, Naren and Maya are given a Bollywood ending.

Like Maya, Yasuko had also spent the entire story following Naren/Ishigami’s lead. It was only in those final moments that she took matters into her own hands, and shed her past passivity like kimono before bedtime. But Maya remains as reactionary as ever even at the end, after she is made aware of Naren’s sacrifice and creepy motivations. Although it must be said that one of the wiser changes that Ghosh has made to the source novel is to alter its perspective; we don’t enter the world of the film from the point of view of Naren. Jaane Jaan understands that since this is the woman’s story, it must be presented as such. And so, while Ishigami was the protagonist of the book, the movie belongs to Maya. Perhaps Nitesh Tiwari should take notes.

Of course, audiences that aren’t familiar with the novel wouldn’t mind the film’s ending, which, to be clear, is also very satisfying. If anything, it underlines how deranged Naren truly is. It also absolves Maya of her crimes, which weren’t exactly premeditated. She has been through enough already, Ghosh’s movie seems to be saying; she doesn’t need to be punished any more. It’s him revisiting familiar themes, going as far back as Kahaani to something as recent as his Lust Stories 2 short, Sex with the Ex. His worldview isn’t as bleak as author Keigo Higashino’s, and more than anything else, the optimism that he has injected into Jaane Jaan is perhaps the most Indian thing about it.