On "Raanjhanaa"

(Warning! Mild spoilers ahead!)

Aanand L. Rai's Raanjhanaa is a throbbing scarlet wound of a movie. Not since Shahrukh Khan jumped off the roof of a train and into Manisha Koirala's explosive embrace in Dil Se has a Bollywood movie been so bracingly, devastatingly, enormously lovesick. At one point in the film, Kundan (Dhanush) drives a scooter into the Ganges in jealous fury, having just been told by the object of his affections, Zoya (Sonam Kapoor), that she loves somebody else. He climbs out of the water, leaving the scooter and Zoya behind. Rai does something similar with the story, taking it headlong into dark, troubled territory, but he keeps propelling his film deeper and deeper until you realize that his film isn't about love triumphant or even, as the title might suggest, love unrequited. In Raanjhanaa, all love, whether it is mutual or one-sided, is a gorgeous, untethered beast, and ultimately all who love tumble helplessly into its waiting jaws. (The notion of falling in love is literalized in the film's visuals; Kundan, arms outstretched Christ-like, beatific smile in place, falling into the river, then onto a bed of Holi colors. This sort of euphoric falling prefigures a more violent felling much later in the movie.)

The plot begins in familiar, filmi territory. In Benaras, a Hindu priest's little boy (the adorable Naman Jain, with a spot-on imitation of Dhanush's accented Hindi) sees a Muslim professor's little girl, and is instantly smitten. His entire being is, from that moment onward, oriented toward Zoya; this shift in his growing consciousness is gloriously illustrated with Tum Tak, the first of Rahman's several perfect songs. Zoya, on her prayer mat, directs her attentions toward a loftier presence. (Further into the story, Zoya's gaze will once again overlook Kundan and train itself on a savior-like figure, the ambitious, high-minded Akram, played with pleasing reticence by Abhay Deol.)    

In typical swain-like fashion, Kundan follows Zoya around for years until she deigns to pay attention to him. Their romance is short-lived. Sent away for years by her parents due to the scandal her tryst with Kundan causes, Zoya comes back from university even more unattainable. Kundan is undaunted, however, and keeps pursuing her. You guys, this isn't even the first half of the film. Wrists have been slit, scooters have been launched into holy rivers, but the story hasn't even begun to go totally, spectacularly nuts. 

Despite the high drama, just about everything in Raanjhanaa rings true (except, perhaps, the political portions of the film, which seem a little too facile.) Even in Benaras, God is in the details, and Rai's team nails the chaos peculiar to small-town life. The camerawork is vividly naturalistic and kinetic, and the colors and textures of Benaras feel vividly lived-in, not art-directed. (Compare the amiably inelegant, dog-poop-laden gullies of Raanjhanaa  to the spit-shined surfaces of Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, another recent film set in Varanasi.) There were moments - the Holi scene where Kundan ambushes Bindiya (the delightful, ferocious Swara Bhaskar) comes to mind - where I felt as if I were in the scene, as if the film had leapt right off the screen and into real life. Rai makes sure to fill his frames with teeming life; a rally marches on as Dhanush dances to the title song, an old lady breathes in her inhaler just out of focus as he sneaks into Zoya's room during a party. Each part is cast just right, with an eye toward picking actors who look like they could actually be living in that mohalla or arguing ethics on that university campus. (The supporting cast is first-rate all around, with Zeeshan Ayyub, as Kundan's long-suffering bestie, stealing several scenes with his pithy one-liners and the actor playing Abhay Deol's sister making a strikingly mournful impression.)

The writing is the other reason I bought into the film's reality, all three instances of wrist-slitting included. Rai and Himanshu Sharma have created a singular pair of characters here. Zoya And Kundan are both children, in a way. They rush toward what they want and use whom they can, heedless of the damage they leave in their wake. Kundan is more obviously immature. He will attempt suicide, he will coerce his friends into some stomach-turning favors, he will abandon his own wedding, in his single-minded obsession. Zoya seems more put-together at first, but she is just as careless, and perhaps more willfully so. From an early age, she is aware of her charms, amused by their effect, and completely willing to employ them to her benefit and enjoyment. Zoya is a girl rather in love with herself. Her lowest point is the exile to her aunt's house, where she isn't allowed to shine bright, be noticed or admired. Even when she falls for a guy, one senses that she likes him, at least in part, because of the sort of person she can be with him - strong, powerful, respected, of consequence. She doesn't love Kundan, but, in that frightening, potent scene where he tells her that he could have loved anybody else, her reaction tells us that she might not really want him to stop loving her. Both these characters' neuroses take interesting turns in the second half (quite different in tone from the first, but not disconnected; I saw it as a structural and tonal representation of the sort of all-consuming love depicted in the film - sunlit and buoyant even during trying times at first, and then darkening into a winter of hopeless, endless, often bitter longing.) 

Both leads rise to the challenge of bringing this complex, messy material to life. Dhanush, a celebrated actor in Tamil cinema, delivers one of the most compulsively watchable lead performances that I've seen in a while. He reminded me at times of a young Kamal Haasan (especially in a scene that directly nods to Sadma) and a young Shahrukh Khan, but really, he is unlike any leading man I've seen in Indian cinema. There isn't a thing he can't do. He is funny, scary, pathetic, charming, moving, moony. His dancing is a wonderful thing to behold. He makes heartbreak almost audible. Hindi is not his strong suit, but he manages to land profane one-liners  (the one about rubbing a snake on one's backside had me in splits) with merry aplomb. He managed to keep me rooting for Kundan, often in spite of myself. 

Sonam Kapoor's role is less crowd-pleasing, but it is also one of the best parts a young actress has gotten to play in recent mainstream Hindi movies. I rather enjoy Sonam, both offscreen and frequently on it, but even I wouldn't argue that she's shown major acting chops in anything prior to this. At her best, she was charming; at her worst, she could be flat and unmemorable. Despite the praise she's getting from film critics (perhaps for the first time since Delhi-6), I was not even a little bit prepared for the kind of work she's done in Raanjhanaa as Zoya. This is a breakthrough performance reminiscent of Aishwarya's in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam; one did not expect it and did not think it possible. 

Rai uses Sonam's plaintive little-girl voice and open, childlike smile to great effect in the scenes where she's playing a high-schooler. But he manages to work that air of entitlement, a brattiness of sorts, that one often sees in Sonam's acting (and public persona), into grown-up Zoya as well. Self-assured in her willowy glamour initially, Sonam clues us into Zoya's cocquettish little manipulations, her barely concealed delight at being desired (she has a great moment when she can barely suppress a smile as she walks away after slapping Dhanush), her great frustration at not getting her way with surprising facility. If Zoya in the first half has notes of Isabel Bradley and Daisy Buchanan in her personality, the post-intermission portions harden her brittle charms, and Sonam's work gets even more interesting. I wondered if I was grading the actress on a curve, but my companion, who doesn't understand Hindi, told me that he was impressed by how much venom she was able to get across just with those lovely, animated eyes. 

Together, Dhanush and Sonam are oddly electric. He sees nothing but her, this tall, well-off, educated Muslim girl who is clearly not meant to be his. She is amused, horrified, repelled by him, but can't quite do without him either. When he holds her, it looks painful, like he is trying to absorb her into him. We know that nothing good can come of love this misguided. But that doesn't make this film, with its big, bruised heart and its funny-sad-lovely ending, any less great.

Summer Lovin' (Part Two): On Why I'm looking forward to "Raanjhanaa"

1) It looks good. Shot on location in Varanasi and Delhi, Raanjhanaa has the specificity of place and culture that I enjoy so much. The costumes and makeup are just right (Sonam's JNU student-activist wardrobe is perfect, and she makes for a surprisingly convincing high school kid in the trailer), and the Banaras scenes are alive with color and flavor and the hustle-bustle of smallish-town India. Aanand L. Rai did a beautiful job of creating lived-in, authentic-seeming worlds in Tanu Weds Manu, and it looks like he's done it again in Raanjhanaa.

2) It looks fun. I often complain that a lot of the mainstream Bollywood films - even some of the really good ones - that are set in upper-middle-class Mumbaidon't sound quite right. It invariably seems to me as if the characters depicted in those films would be speaking English, or English spattered with casual Hindi, if they existed in the real world.When they set forth on pyaar and deewangi, it usually rings a little labored, almost as if  the lines were thought and written in English and then translated to Hindi. Filmmakers who set their films in a milieu in which the people actually speak Hindi don't face that problem, and they get to write some clever, funny, crowd-pleasing lines. Kangna's Kanpuriya firebrand had the most hilariously caustic dialogue in Tanu Weds Manu, and  here, too, there's plenty of humor to be found in the writing. The trailer is filled with stuff that got me chuckling. When Dhanush's friend points out to him that he'll be eating firni at his beloved's walima if he doesn't confess his feelings to her, it cracks me up. It isn't mithai at a shaadi. It's firni at a walima, and it's just right. When he tells the rickshaw-wallah, "Don't take money from her; she's your bhabhi" line? I can't tell you how often this desi kid has heard some posturing small-town cousin say that IRL.

3) The soundtrack is gorgeous. Guys, I'm not kidding. For the past couple weeks, I've been listening almost exclusively to the Raanjhanaa OST (except, of course, when I am listening to the Lootera OST), and it is a thing of beauty. Tum Tak and the title song have a kind of soaring, romantic joyousness to them, while Aise Na Dekho and Nazar Laaye Na are the sort of quiet, amber-dipped Rahman tracks you play on a lazy afternoon drive by the lake. I want to see how these beautiful songs come to life in film's narrative.

4) The cast is exciting. Dhanush, in the little I've seen of his Tamil outings, is a marvelously intense actor. Here, he's doing his best lovelorn swain, and he's doing it with early-SRK levels of charm. He also seems to have worked very hard to get the Hindi right. (The accent is there, but they've kinda written an explanation for it into the plot.) And then there's Sonam Kapoor. Sonam gets a lot of hate online, but I am just gonna go ahead and tell you that I . . . might love her. That's right: I'm a Sonam Kapoor apologist. I mean, she's not a great actress by any means. In a couple of her films, she's not even good. (Like, come on. She was basically playing herself in Aisha, and she was the weakest part of the cast there.) And that nasal, entitled voice can get a bit grating. But she's not bad in that lifeless, wooden way that Katrina Kaif is. And I found her charming in Delhi-6 and Mausam, both movies that required her to get away from her public persona and play what Times of India's website will call "Indian" characters, in low-key, extensively detailed, relatively un-filmi settings. (Of course, Mausam eventually rode the express train to Crazyganj, but I digress.) She might not be the all-purpose Hindi film heroine, but she has an affable screen presence, and has a look that works really well in a variety of genres. (This doesn't sound like much, but think about it. How many leading ladies would look as convincing as a period-piece princess as they would as a cosmopolitan fashion-y type? Not too many, right?) I have high hopes for Sonam here. Kangna was a revelation in the richly-written part she got to perform in Tanu Weds Manu, and, judging by the trailer, Sonam gets to do more than just be the object of the male lead's affection in Raanjhanaa. Also, she is delightful in the flirting/squabbling moments with Dhanush, and there isn't really much we can do about that voice. The supporting cast looks stellar, too. Swara Bhaskar was Tanu Weds Manu's MVP, and should be cast in more stuff. Zeeshan Ayyub is hilarious, and might just steal this one the way Deepak Dobriyal stole Tanu. Abhay Deol can generally be relied on to deliver a solid performance (even though I get the feeling that he might think he's a better actor than he actually is.)

5) Tanu Weds Manu was so great. I've already mentioned seven million good things about that film, but Aanand L. Rai's debut feature is seriously underrated. I love how sweet Madhavan is in it. I love its unhurried pace. I love its idiosyncratic, warm-hearted portrayal of middle-class life in India. I love that the wild heroine isn't judged for drinking or smoking or having sex, but is called out, instead, for her inconsiderate behavior, and isn't tamed at the end. I'm hoping Raanjhanaa is just as good. But I was all misgivings-y about YJHD in the first installment of this little series, and I ended up loving it. So obviously I'm going to hate this one. Sigh.

On "Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani"

(Spoilers! Not explicit ones, but still!)

Ayaan Mukerji's sophomore feature possesses a number of annoying traits that are standard-issue in lesser Dharma movies. The first half indulges in way too much of the cornball humor so beloved of The House That KJo Built. Here, these bits are mostly centered around a vapid firang named Lara; they are sporadically funny but never inspired, and feel uneasily written in, a little cheapening even. The background score is wall-to-wall and sometimes intolerable. We get the tinkly fairy sounds and the swell of the orchestra in a romantic scene, we get sound effects straight out of 2003 in a comic scene, we get a creepy-ass chorus of children going  ooh and aah in scenes of wonder and discovery. Also, the film gives us the tomboy-to-girlie-girl makeover that we've seen in both Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Student of The Year. (The latter turned the spunky, interesting best-friend character into a kurta-clad homemaker whose unnecessary transformation is apparently explained by marriage and childbearing. I don't mind a female character dressing in a more stereotypically feminine manner, and boy, does Kalki Koechlin work the series of outfits that could probably cost as much as one of hubby Anurag's productions. But why, in 2013, are we still making lesbian jokes about a girl who doesn't wear pink? And why does the shift in her look need to be commented upon, as if it were an indispensable, highly desirable change? What else, one might ask resignedly, can one expect of a film where the female characters have their legs out in several costume changes on an uphill trek, while the males stay fully clad. Ugh, am I right?

Now that I've completely convinced you that this film is the no-good, very-bad kind, let me admit that, despite the litany of quibbles I've listen above, I really enjoyed Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. I know, you guys. I didn't see it coming either. The first half was pleasant , but rarely much more. Bookish Naina (Deepika Padukone) takes an impulsive trip to Manali with kids she knows from school, and falls for rakish Bunny as he expounds at length on his world-traveler ambitions. In the process, she loses the glasses, opens up, and learns how to have fun. It's basically a Disney Channel film with grown-up Bollywood stars, well-acted and travelogue-pretty. You worry that it is going to get worse, and you're going to be subjected to that insufferably played-out "love vs. everything else" conflict once again.
But, post-intermission, the film takes an unexpected turn for the better. It's as if Mukerji decided his writing needed to grow up just when his characters did. Bunny meets Naina again, eight years after the trek, at a friend's lavish destination wedding in Rajasthan. He's a travel journalist, she's a doctor. Amid the revelry - and there is quite a bit of revelry - sparks fly. 

In his tender debut, Wake Up Sid, Ayaan Mukerji kept plot minimal and unfussy, and patiently allowed his protagonists to find their place in the world. Here, too, the narrative is slight. Most of the heavy stuff happens offscreen. One of the characters loses a parent, another fails at making his passion project work, a third gives up on unrequited love and finds the requited kind. We don't see these life-changing moments happen, but we see how they've shaped Bunny and his friends. 

The early parts of the film didn't prepare me for how interesting the writing would get as the narrative unspooled. The initial reels tell us things they've already shown, and don't tell them in particularly original ways. Bunny waxes poetic about his love for traveling, calling it a "nasha" (addiction); his scrapbook, his wall-collage, and his own admissions have already driven home his globetrotting ambitions, though. Naina's love for Bunny is writ large on her face, but she, too, informs us in voiceover that she feels "ishq ka nasha." We get the sense, as one often does in these films about upper-class, westernized Mumbai youngsters, that the lines ought to have been in English. 

Thankfully, Mukerji mostly gives up on the clunky abstractions as the movie goes along. We now know who Bunny and Naina are, as do Bunny and Naina themselves; no more explication is necessary. Now the film lets its characters slowly rediscover each other, altered by eight years of experience. Bunny might be running away from significant baggage  on his voyages, but his choices aren't condemned. His friend Aditi (Kalki Koechlin, wonderfully unvarnished as usual) has made a surprising choice of her own, but, in a lovely revelation, we learn that her choice isn't a compromise. Naina's contentment with her life, her family, her medical practice is sweetly telegraphed; she doesn't need to, or want to, get away from her life, even for love's sake. Mukerji steers the film toward familiarly explosive filmi territory - a potential romantic rival (not Rahul Khanna, surprisingly) is introduced, the big wedding looks like it might fall apart at the mandap - and then calmly turns away. He isn't looking for explosions, and he isn't looking to punish his characters into an epiphany, either. Bunny isn't wrong for wanting to go places, and Naina isn't wrong for wanting to stay at home. They both know this, and they don't need to fight about it. They just need to figure all of it out. 

A plot this uneventful would be an interminable bore if the leads were flavorless. In a Ranbir Kapoor joint, however, you don't need to worry about the leading man's performance. By now we're all aware that Ranbir can do charming in his sleep. (Even the magnificent La Dixit, giving you your money's worth even before the film properly gets going, looks entirely delighted by his shenanigans in the rousing Ghagra number.) He is by turns glib and goofy. He flirts with everyone, he GQs it all over Paris, he sings, and dances his way through a series of songs that may not stand alone memorably, but look and sound terrific in the theater. But he is sharpest when the film asks more of him than easy likability. In the scene where Bunny finds Naina in dishy male company, Ranbir goes from pleased to pissy with an almost scary absence of effort. He also gets fine moments with Farooque Shaikh and Tanvi Azmi (Mukerji has a gift when it comes to writing and casting beautifully believable parents.) My favorite moment in the film is the one in which Farooque Shaikh, one of the all-time greats at onscreen geniality, says goodbye to his U.S.-bound son. This scene is saved for the end in a marvelously effective bit of non-linear storytelling, and it has an aching realness to it. Not gonna lie, I cried a little.

In my piece on why I was ambivalent about the film, I wrote quite a bit about why I was worried about Deepika Padukone's performance. But as Naina, Deepika finally manages to overcome the banality that has plagued her in many of her non-glamazon roles. It helps that this is a good part, not a stock love-interest role. Naina doesn't pine away when the love of her life leaves. She develops friendships, she builds a career, she buys a killer wardrobe of sexy lehengas and flattering salwar-kurtas. Deepika gets just about all of it right. She conveys Naina's initial tentativeness, her quiet sorrow at having lived a cloistered life, and the wonder of first love with such warmth that it isn't at all hard to empathize with her as we once did with Kajol in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.  She still acts better with that luminous face than with her voice, but her line readings here don't give you the impression that she painstakingly memorized her dialogue and is trying to say them just right. 

Deepika also generates tremendous chemistry with Ranbir. He plays it so that Bunny seems drawn to Naina even before she joyously finds her mojo (and killer white shorts) in the Balam Pichkari song. And who coud blame the dude when Deepika looks so radiantly moonstruck around him? When he pulls her in for a dance, and wants to hold her for five more minutes, it is both swoony and sad.

There is quite a bit that irked me about YJHD, but even more that surprised and impressed me. It is a pleasurable little movie that is determined to give you a good time while managing a surprising amount of depth and maturity. I kinda loved it.