(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.
