The Hindu : New Delhi News : Some snack for dreamers and food for realists…. Cinema

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Sunday, Oct 28, 2007
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New Delhi

New Delhi

Some snack for dreamers and food for realists…. Cinema

ZIYA US SALAM

DIFFERENT STROKES: There is plenty of choice for cinemagoers this week with “Jab We Met”, “No Smoking” and “Mumbai Salsa” offering different shades of cinema.

DIFFERENT STROKES: There is plenty of choice for cinemagoers this week with “Jab We Met”, “No Smoking” and “Mumbai Salsa” offering different shades of cinema.

JAB WE MET

(At Delite and other theatres in Delhi and elsewhere)

Nice. Fresh and frothy. Easy camaraderie. Natural repartee. Imtiaz Ali’s “Jab We Met” will surprise many with its lasting good cheer and dispel many a myth. Yes, Kareena Kapoor can act. Yes, you can make a film without taking yourself too seriously. Some moments of genuine good spirit, some of little smiles, all adding up to a film that drives away all gloom and doom. What’s more, it partially retrieves the Punjabiyat lost to an avalanche of remixes and untamed bhangras.

It is that little heart-warming film you never suspected was waiting for you. The promos were all unbearably loud, and Kareena seemed keen to keep pace.

But in a classic cinematic adaptation of never judging a book by its cover, the film proves better than its rushes.

On the face of it, Ali’s is just another boy-met-girl-fell-in-love story, the kind Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol did with such élan in “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge”. But hey, Bollywood does more for propagating history than a hundred textbooks. And thank God for that. Here, too, the hero and the heroine meet aboard a train, heading from Mumbai to Delhi.

Shahid Kapoor, trying desperately to look older with rimless spectacles, is that rich guy who would have been extinct but for our cinema. He has never had to work for his goodies. So, predictably, one day he trashes it all and boards a train. No idea of the journey, none of the destination. Just escapism the privileged way!

Also there is Kareena, making a heavy weather of getting in! But once there, well, she is there. She rules the frames, she calls the shots, and gets into the skin of the character of a motor-mouthed Punjabi girl – hey, why do all Punjabis in Hindi films have to be insufferably loud? This one here is on her way to Bhatinda, with all the romantic notions of eloping with her Prince Charming. You don’t need a degree in astrology to predict what will happen next, but Ali keeps the proceedings moving at a brisk pace. And he is greatly helped by the natural chemistry between his lead pair.

Shahid is a natural actor with a fine diction. In understatement lies his strength. However, Kareena is a pleasant package. With her washed-up looks, she comes across as a girl who knows what it is to singe with a spark. And let’s not to forget the points added by the screenplay. The script has few twists but Ali improvises with a screenplay that shows him in a favourable light.

Any dampener? Superfluous songs. They hark back to the times when the guy and the girl looked into each other’s eyes, butterflies darted across the screen, and lo, the hero and heroine were running around the trees. Talking of trees, Tarun Arora as Kareena’s real love interest here is consistently wooden.

“Jab We Met” is the kind of candyfloss romance your sweetheart would enjoy. Pleasantly, it is also the kind of film you can drive down to watch with your family on a Sunday evening.

NO SMOKING

(At Shiela and other Delhi theatres)

Anurag Kashyap continues with his fascination for experimental cinema. This time he comes up with a film that would not have been possible even five years ago when he made bold to make “Paanch” which has since been lying in the cans. A few years ago, “No Smoking” would have been a 15-minute documentary. Today, thanks to the multiplex boom, Anurag has dared to make a full-fledged movie, even packing in elements of rocking music and dance in what is e ssentially a cry against smoking.

He lifts a boring Sunday afternoon fill-in quasi-documentary theme and culls together a film replete with black humour. He reins himself in as he directs John Abraham as a chain smoker, an urban achiever. He has a fat bank balance, and many years of prime youth left in the kitty. There is his beautiful wife, and a house that could pass off for an art gallery with its brilliant interplay of light and shadow. But many summers ago a poet said, “Kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahan nahin milta, kabhi jameen to kabhi aasmaan nahin milta….” So there is a little problem in our guy’s life too: He smokes like a chimney, and his wife is threatening to call it quits on the relationship if he does not quit the habit that thrills only to kill.

Anurag comes up with a neat deflection as he sends his hero to Baba Bangali, a self-designed doctor-dervish who cures everybody of the bad habit, in his own way. He does not prescribe medicine, just a grotesque way of blackmail.

It is an interesting, even if a farfetched premise. That Anurag is able to attempt it is no small measure a tribute to the times in which we live.

He does not succeed all the way. There is an air of monotony about the film. And termites are not far off as the film refuses to move. The narration is weak. But he is saved with a clever use of camera angles, lights, shades and some good lines. Of course, Paresh Rawal as the baba helps too.

“No Smoking” is the kind of film you would applaud but few would venture to watch. It should come with a statutory warning: Making such films can be injurious to the box office health.

MUMBAI SALSA

(At Satyam, Patel Nagar, and other theatres)

Change is the only constant in Bollywood. Even as Anurag Kashyap ends up with a mixed bag in “No Smoking”, Manoj Tyagi, the script writer of films like “Page 3” and “Corporate”, takes the winds of change further. “Mumbai Salsa” is a completely urban film, a world removed from the industry which once talked of rural poverty, economic disparity and casteism, etc. Those things might still matter to millions, but Hindi cinema is targeting the urban movers and shakers, those with the power to pay, and the opportunity to dream. “Mumbai Salsa” is the latest to talk of urban angst, the race up the corporate ladder, and the attendant promiscuity, etc.

There is little novelty in the subject, considering many recent films have talked of the same.

Where it scores is in the grip: the film never gets too overbearing for its own comfort, and Tyagi resists the temptation to be either didactic or preachy.

Hell, his heroine wants career first, marriage later. Cool. Hell, his hero wants money first, marriage later. Then there are others who take short cuts to name, fame, etc. Cool.

Tyagi’s guys are drawn from real life, without the sad reality bogging them down. They flit in and out of relationships. And Tyagi handles all the complexities of urban existence with dispassionate ease.

Watch “Mumbai Salsa”. Without being a path-breaking film, it makes a little noise for the emerging reality of our growing nation.

A MIGHTY HEART

(At Spice PVR, Noida; and other theatres)

This is a scathing indictment of a section of our media which runs to capture a picture of Angelina Jolie-Brad Pitt when they come calling, and ignores our own Irrfan Khan when he stars in an important role in a Hollywood film. “A Mighty Heart” is that uplifting film that deserves to be hailed for its timeliness.

Narrating the story of Daniel Pearl, the young journalist who paid the ultimate price, from his wife’s perspective, it never seeks to score any brownie points. Political didactics are kept aside too in what is essentially a human story. And Irrfan as a Pakistani cop acquits himself with credit. Never out of place in a movie screaming about Angelina’s acting prowess, he deserves better from Bollywood.

“A Mighty Heart” is a spirited venture in what was a deflating tragedy for journalists across the world.

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