Division plays are rarely easy to watch. They are meant to hurt. Even decades later, stories of displacement, isolation and loss continue to feel painfully immediate. In i will come backImtiaz Ali has tried to capture the pain of uprooting and the longing for the home left behind. Emotions are visible. The problem is that the film has nothing to offer around them.

The story begins with old Ishar Singh, fondly called Keanu (Naseeruddin Shah), who was misbehaving on his death bed. While her family waits for her to die peacefully, something in her past won’t let her go. Enter his grandson Nirvair (Diljit Dosanjh), who flies in from London to see him one last time and slowly begins to piece together the mystery.

Keanu constantly talks about the Martians, World War II, the Moon, and various other obscure things besides the church, leaving Nirvair to work on understanding his incoherent thoughts. His search eventually takes him to Sargodha to a love story Buried under the wounds of partition.

The film moves between present-day Delhi and pre-partition Punjab. In the flashbacks, Vedang Raina plays young Keanu, who falls in love with Afsana aka Mallika Dilfareb (Sharvari). The two meet in secret and believe that their relationship can survive despite religious differences. Both of them do not realize how rapidly the world around them is about to change.

The pain of leaving one’s home – or being forced to leave it – is something the film depicts effectively in parts. AR Rahman’s music often helps in creating an emotional atmosphere. Yet the storytelling struggles to maintain this.

At almost every turn, i will come back Takes longer than necessary. The scenes just keep going without adding any emotional burden. The narrative goes around in circles before reaching points that the audience has already understood. Till the interval, the film spends so much time in establishing its sadness that the sadness starts losing its impact.

This is also the biggest surprise. Imtiaz Ali’s best films are layered rather than heavy. They leave the audience with questions, discoveries and emotional residue. Here, the familiar ingredients remain – love, memory, longing and personal journeys – but the final dish never comes together.

The love story itself is another weak link. Raina and Sharvari display sincerity, but the chemistry between them is never strong enough to justify the emotional investment the film demands. Their romance becomes more of an idea than an experience. As a result, much of the film’s emotional foundation feels shaky.

Naseeruddin Shah is effortlessly compelling, even in a role built primarily around memories and fragments. However, Diljit Dosanjh is surprisingly underutilized. His character spends most of the film reacting to events rather than inspiring them.

politics of film is even more complex.

i will come back Deep sympathy towards the people devastated by partition. That sympathy is understandable. But at times, the film becomes so obsessed with the loss of home that it begins to romanticize displacement itself.

At one point, Nirvair suggests that those who migrated to India after Partition spent their lives feeling like strangers in their own land. It’s a shocking line, but also a little disturbing. The tragedy of Partition was that people lost their homes. The victory of its survivors was that they built new buildings. The film seems to be more interested in the former than the latter.

A similar uneasiness emerges through the reflection of an unnamed refugee, shown in the film as a written quote: “Between leaving my home and choosing my life, I would gladly have chosen death. But no one asked me.”

The purpose of this line is to be heartbreaking. it is. But it also raises uncomfortable questions. There is something disturbing about a world-view that sees survival as a compromise and death as the purest form of belonging. Memory should be respected, but not at the cost of diminishing the value of life.

The film also simplifies some of the complexities of division. Violence is often presented through a chain of reactions, giving the impression that the cruelty of one community is a response to the cruelty of another community. It is shown in the film that Muslim mobs become violent after seeing trains full of killed Muslims. On paper, this might seem like an attempt to explain away the violence. In practice, this creates a troubling chronology: one side appears to react, the other appears to initiate.

In a story about one of the bloodiest and most chaotic chapters of Indian history – where Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs all suffered unimaginable losses – such an outline seems limiting and even triggering.

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Despite being based on the history of Partition, the reluctance to take the name of Pakistan in the film is equally surprising. We hear about homes left behind, borders crossed, and memories carried across generations. We also visit Sargodha. Yet the country remains strangely absent from the conversation. Almost as if the film wants to convey the emotional burden of Partition without fully engaging with the political reality that gave rise to it.

Visually, however, the film often impresses. The cinematography creates beautiful compositions, especially in the pre-partition scenes. Faces are allowed to carry history, and the interplay of light and shadow often tells more than the dialogue.

Rahman’s music also provides emotional momentum at times, though surprisingly few songs leave a lasting impact beyond the film.

At one point, a character comments about a destination, “You have to go around, it takes a lot of time..” The dialogue inadvertently describes the film.

i will come back Wants to create dialogue between generations – between those who lived through Partition and those who inherited its memories. It seeks to explore grief, belonging, identity and reconciliation. These are worthy ambitions. But ambition alone can’t sustain a film.

The supporting cast – Rajat Kapoor, Sanjay Suri, Anjana Sukhani, Manish Choudhary and Banita Sandhu – keeps the momentum going. However, none of them deliver particularly memorable performances.

What’s left is a visually beautiful drama that’s weakened by its pace, weakened by an unconvincing romance and burdened by ideas that are more questionable than deeper. The craving is real. The feeling is true. Unfortunately, the storytelling never quite picks up.

A completely unexpected film by Imtiaz Ali. Especially for those who like Imtiaz Ali’s films.