HEART SHOTS
The New Sunday Express
August 7, 2005

Love and bullets coexist in a small, solid movie that’s an unexpectedly pleasant surprise.


Picture courtesy: glamsham.com

No one seems very afraid of weapons in the Kashmir of ...Yahaan. A platoon prepares to storm a hideout, with each man waiting on the steps leading to the place, top to bottom – and a child coolly climbs down past them, without so much as a glance at the machine guns in their hands. Then, Ada (Minissha Lamba) is startled when army men surround her, again with guns, and she drops her bag. Her subsequent action is merely to pick up whatever’s scattered on the ground and walk away, after cheekily pointing out that their jeep has a punctured tyre. But most telling is when a boy is hauled up for playing truant from school, and he replies with a dog-ate-my-homework casualness that there was a bomb at the madrasa.

“Yakeen nahin aata yahaan ek waqt Shammi Kapoor naacha karta tha,” muses Captain Aman (Jimmy Shergill), about this Kashmir he finds himself in, and he couldn’t have put it better. For most of us, the only memories of the place are movie memories, and if his words invoke nostalgia, the then-versus-now images invoke nausea. Instead of the expected riot of exotically colourful blooms, we see the dull red of the blood seeping out of children who’ve been shot. It isn’t sunny, picturesque Dal Lake scenarios with smiling lovers that open the film; it’s a ramshackle, dimly-lit, dirty-brown printing press with potential terrorists.

This doesn’t exactly seem the kind of atmosphere to set a delicate love story in, but that’s what ...Yahaan is. It’s a Roja-type tale of Ada (a Kashmiri) falling in love with Aman (a non-Kashmiri), and then moving heaven and earth – yes, in Kashmir, that metaphorical heaven on earth – to get him back after they get separated. Like Roja, this is a love story that feels like a war movie, and it’s a war movie that feels like a love story. In Kashmir, the terrorism and the tenderness are inseparable; one wouldn’t exist – seemingly – without the other.

The love story works, as love stories usually do, because of the people who are in love. Jimmy Shergill finally gets to prove that he’s leading-man material. He may not be the kind of star who burns up the screen with charisma, but he manages something equally remarkable – he holds your attention by calling very little attention to himself. And contrasting his strong, silent type is the sprightly newcomer Minissha Lamba, who has one of those smiles that can apparently power up a small-sized nuclear plant. Their scenes together – underscored by a lovely theme on the acoustic guitar – have an unforced sweetness, a non-cloying cuteness.

But even as you’re lulled into their love story, you’re never allowed to forget that it’s taking place in the middle of a war. Aman asks Ada why her sister keeps giggling so when in front of him, and you expect the answer to be something silly, like his fly being undone. But Ada responds, “Vaadi mein koi to has raha hai. Woh bhi achcha nahin lagta?” It’s a splash of ice-cold water on a so-far heartwarming sequence, a feel-bad ending to a feel-good moment. A lot of ...Yahaan – especially in the increasingly-contrived second half – is the stuff of wish-fulfillment fantasy, but such true-to-life emotional flip-flops make it seem real. However much two people are in love, how can they remain untouched by the hate around them?

There are bits of speechifying that hurriedly attempt to justify both sides of the Kashmir equation (though these parts are where Yashpal Sharma, as a rather humane terrorist, gets to shine), and the freshness of the start doesn’t quite linger till the end, but what stays with you is the conviction with which ...Yahaan has been made – a conviction not just in its story but also in our style of cinema. Shoojit Sircar appears one of the increasing number of new directors with a fondness for old-style narratives, and this is evident right from the protagonist’s name being a marker for what he is (much like, say, Dharmendra’s brave captain in Haqeeqat being named Bahadur Singh) – “aman” means security and safety, and that’s what Aman has come to Kashmir to provide, security and safety.

If that doesn’t convince you of Sircar’s intentions, perhaps the dialogues will. When Ada slaps her forehead after invoking the Lord’s name, Aman asks, “Allah ki galati ki saza apne maathe ko kyon de rahi ho?” No one, of course, talks like this in real life, but since when have our movies been entirely representative of real life? And if our life were a Hindi movie, wouldn’t we like to converse in such perfectly crafted poetry? Sircar is good with the songs too. Shantanu Moitra, after Parineeta’s Piyu bole, delivers yet another dulcet track in Pooche jo koi, and its passionate, poetic picturisation dredges up memories of that first, secret flush of being in love, when the only two people who know about the relationship are the two people in it.

By the end of ...Yahaan, such muted emotion gradually mutates to emotional manipulation, but it’s the good kind. You know they’re tugging at your heartstrings, but it’s done so honestly and so well, you can’t – or don’t – resist it. After the climax, violins soar to underline the poignancy of the last scene, in the same way violins have traditionally soared in a thousand lesser, cheaply sentimental movies. It’s a tribute to the heart behind ...Yahaan that, here, you don’t mind. This time, those violins have earned the right to soar.


THE OLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
The New Sunday Express
July 31, 2005

Amitabh Bachchan and Sharmila Tagore are so good together, they make a middling movie seem better than it actually is.


Picture courtesy: nowrunning.com

There are many reasons to get annoyed with Viruddh, but it’s likely you won’t remember any of them by the end of this story of Vidyadhar (Amitabh Bachchan) and wife Sumi (Sharmila Tagore). That’s because, after what seems like eons, we see here an absorbing portrait of an empty nest. (When was the last one? Dhoop?) The couple’s only son (John Abraham) is away, studying in London, and all these two have is each other – and, at first, all we see is these two having to do with each other.

He sneaks sugar into his food when it’s forbidden, she sneaks salt, and this sort of matching-matching cuteness could have gotten really cloying, but director Mahesh Manjrekar is back in form, and he’s back to what he does best – depicting believable middle-classness. He did that through Reema Lagoo’s mother character in Vaastav, he did that through Namrata Shirodkar’s girl-next-door in Tera Mera Saath Rahen, and he does that with Amitabh and Sharmila here.

This isn’t like Baghban, where the couple looked so sophisticated and self-possessed, the very idea of them suffering those indignities was laughable. Here, just one look at his paunch and his waddling walk, at her sagging jowls and lined face, and you believe that moment when she wonders what’s so interesting in the papers that he’s not talking to her, and he’s actually dozed off. This isn’t the most exciting of happenings, but then life isn’t always the most exciting of happenings. It touches a chord, because it feels true – just like his still wearing his now-ill-fitting shaadi ka suit feels true, just like their banter feels true. (He’s at the airport, waiting to receive their son, and she, like all obsessive mothers, worries that John may get lost in the crowd. His gentle rebuke carries touches of both exasperation and amusement: “Yeh airport hai, kumbh ka mela nahin.”) Amitabh and Sharmila work wonderfully together.

But the problem is, they work so wonderfully together, we don’t much care about or believe in anything that takes us away from their characters. Manjrekar seems to have spent all his energies on the couple, so when he brings on a cop (Sachin Khedekar) with off-on conscience issues, or a garage mechanic (Sanjay Dutt) who may or may not be a surrogate-son figure, they barely register. And when there’s a change of scene to a London nightclub – that’s where John meets Anusha Dandekar (perfectly cast as a Brit who can’t speak Hindi) – it’s like a slap in the face. It feels so alien, and we’re so snuggled up in that middle-class Mumbai home with the two old people, we want to return to them at once. (Even so, Manjrekar’s London is light years removed from, say, Karan Johar’s. The middle-classness carries through even there, when John, while phoning home, gets disconnected because his card runs out of talk time.)

After dawdling along rather entertainingly – and in a manner reflective of its senior-citizen leads – Viruddh gets on the fast tack post-interval, when tragedy strikes the family and Vidyadhar seeks justice. That’s the cue for politicians, corrupt cops, courtroom theatrics – again, all of this isn’t fleshed out very convincingly. Suddenly, this becomes the kind of movie where a conch shell is blown in the background as Vidyadhar makes the transition from Amiable Old Man to Angry Old Man, bringing about a climax that feels neither right nor realistic. (All this, amidst unforgivably shameless plugs for the likes of Western Union and Nerolac Paints – yes, even the jingle is played as part of the score).

But there are still moments of great compassion – when Vidyadhar pleads with Sanjay Dutt’s character to continue working so that the noise from the (neighbouring) garage will reassure him that things are back to normal, or when Vidyadhar meets the villain of the piece, who isn’t really a heartless soul as much as someone who acted in the heat of the moment. The latter actually gets his bit of screen time to defend himself – credibly, logically, even sympathetically. That’s the sort of thing that makes Viruddh worthwhile – even if the events don’t always connect, the emotions do.