Lootera

I remember we were once told in scriptwriting class that you begin to notice all the technical aspects of a film (the cinematography, editing and what have you) when the story fails to hold your attention. It is quite the opposite with me. Nothing distracts me from bad story-telling. And so I have nothing to say about the cinematography, the acting, the Bengali literature/culture references and whatever else Lootera has got praise for. 

I must say I loved the first five minutes of the film. The way it opened, the play (was it Ramayan?), Sonakshi Sinha relishing it with child-like joy, and the first foreshadowing of her illness. Then her father, the zamindar decides to tell her a story. Cue in a 'let me tell you a pariyoon ki kahani' type background music for a barbaric story about a king being betrayed and his parrot (which safeguards his soul/life) getting beheaded. It might have worked in an ironic way but that sadly wasn't the intent. 

Varun's character encompasses all possible human traits. He starts off being a little bit of an introverted, shy, hulk of a man. He looks nervous around Pakhi, not because he is afraid of being caught, but because she's a woman. He looks doomed and brooding when she's not around. When we see him in the latter part of the film, it might as well have been a different person. He is suddenly all man. Pakhi's character I liked. Her's had the most economical exposition. Very well done. I know she's a protected, indulged child in like five minutes! Now, if she is the apple of her father's eye, why would he consent to her marriage without any background check done on the boy? Varun saying he is orphaned isn't enough. (Raanjhanaa and Lootera and beginning to sound similar!)

I had no clue Varun wasn't who he claimed to be, so when that information was revealed it was unexpected. But I didn't feel half as bad for Pakhi as I did for her father when Varun dumps her and cleans out the treasury. He left that poor man with NOTHING but heart ache (literally :)) all because it would have been improper to tell his adopted uncle no. When Pakhi confronts him with a 'So your mama/chacha was more important to you than me,' he deflects the answer in the lamest way possible: "You are rich, grew up in mansions, what do you know?" As with Raanjhanaa, here too I found the protagonist's actions beyond redemption or empathy. 

Varun's two decisions, one to stand up to his uncle and get married to Pakhi, and two, to run away the next morning were without external provocation. I am doing the film a favour by ignoring the chacha landing up there and giving him a veiled threat, because 1. Varun had no reason to feel threatened. Whether his chacha tells Pakhi's father 'his asliyat' or Varun ditches her, Pakhi was bound to find out the next morning. But submitting to the chacha meant Pakhi found out his true colours in the saddest of ways, and 2. Varun later claims he ran away on the day of the wedding out of loyalty to the man who bought him up. So the uncle didn't have to threaten him. That scene was to make Varun seem like he was being forced by a malignant force to act against his wishes but that could hardly be the case. It just occurred to me that it is representative of the very thing I blame the writer (s) of: using outrageous character actions to avoid cliches. In the hands of a less aspiring writer/director, Varun's uncle would have threatened to cause Pakhi great harm should Varun go ahead with the marriage. And so Varun leaves Pakhi for HER good. Cliched yes, but I'd actually have preferred that for the logic it lends Varun's actions thereafter. This is a long explanation for a scene I planned to ignore :) So if Varun was forced to leave Pakhi to protect her, this might have become the epic love story they were going for. 

Next, there was no trust built between the two for it to be broken. The scene when she has her attack in the car and he has to inject her with her medicine was well-directed, but under-used. And it certainly was cute when Pakhi yells at him for saying no to her, but that means she's in control of the relationship not he. The film is about trust being broken and then re-built. But, where was the trust gained in the first place? I get that Pakhi's character was drawn up to be childlike-trusting. She falls for the new archeologist because he is new. It is sweet but it makes me less sympathetic towards her. Like I said before, I felt a lot more for her father than her... which is okay I suppose.

Moving on, as Varun does quite happily... we enter the dark, sombre second half. Varun lands up shooting his friend, accidentally, sure, but he was trying to kill someone nonetheless... a police officer doing his job, to be precise. And what was he saving? His own bloody skin. And this killing changes our bumbling, spineless non-hero into a raging, righteous, full on testosterone hero. He comes barging into Pakhi's house and demands to know how dare she inform the police! He even pulls out the very same gun on her and her help. The justification for his anger is that he did not realise that his previous actions resulted in the death of the Zamindar. Like breaking a poor girl's heart and robbing her father blind aren't enough reasons for her to call the cops on him.

Pakhi gives back as good as she can (there was a rediff review about how their noses in this scene reflect their inner turmoil which I found really amusing. But perhaps it is true. Just that I never noticed how their noses were framed). There is one weak attempt to call the police and after that she doesn't bother. He proceeds to squat in her house... again to save his ass. See what I mean by outrageous character actions? Now that Varun's male-ness has made an appearance it refuses to go away. He thunders through the house, grabs her at will, huffs and growls and is absolutely nothing like what he was earlier. And it isn't that the earlier version of him was an act. He was only pretending to be an archeologist. The tenderness, bewilderment and love was all his own. I guess the writers felt that if Varun returned to her cowering and pitiful, what story would have been there left to tell? I think there was. Changing his character just for some conflict or chemistry is silly.

Then, out of nowhere, Pakhi whose character was so well-defined, goes all nuts about a tree outside her house. It isn't even like her favourite tree or anything. If they had at least shown her to be superstitious earlier, or if, say, when her father dies she notices that the tree outside her house had no leaves, or something, I'd have been able to understand her obsession. The thoota (parrot) tale isn't the reason, unless there was an edited scene following that in which Pakhi believes she is going to die and her father tells her that she can never, because he locked her soul in their Dalhousie guest house walla tree. So this tree-obsession was a force fit from The Last Leaf. (And what a silly girl it makes her too. Doesn't she understand the concept of winter and spring? Leaves fall means tree dead? Tu-tut.) She is too much of an adult to believe in rubbish like that, and too much of an adult for us to not argue with. Varun listens to her, nods along and immediately gets to the task of painting yellow leaves (nice touch though, the colour).

Let's assume Pakhi's belief in her life being tied to the tree's leaves is convincing for us and Varun... But the last 30 minutes, which was the The Last Leaf adaptation, missed the whole point. The Last Leaf was about a selfless sacrifice. The old man downstairs (who was a painter and looking to make his masterpiece) had no reason to go through such lengths for a child, but he does. He doesn't do it every night either, because that is just plain stupid. Couldn't you find a more solid way of fixing the leaf that didn't require you to climb up every night? How about fixing more than one leaf? And what if the leaf fell during the day? Who is to tie the leaf after he dies? What makes him think that after he leaves, she will stop believing in this stupidity? See, The Last Leaf is based on a child's irrational fear and builds to the climax on a stormy night. When you read The Last Leaf you are convinced that the next morning there will be no leaf, and you fear how the child is going to react to it. In Lootera there was no such anxiety. And in Lootera it wasn't sacrifice as much as it was redemption. He owed it to Pakhi to save her life.

Which brings me to my biggest grouse: the lack of surprise in the act of sacrifice. The reason we remember The Last Leaf as well as we do (I do at least) is because the sacrifice took us by surprise. Here Varun owes it to her. Where is the surprise if his inner world is thrown wide open to Pakhi and us. For at least an hour he labours through his redemption in full public view. He is no kind stranger. He stays with Pakhi and helps her through her illness. Hence the leaf-tying act was diluted. It is the only thing she doesn't know about him, but that can hardly surprise her much. To contrast this, what if he everything he did in the second half was without her knowledge?

Imagine that Pakhi does not see Varun at her guest house, but he does. He finds out what harm he has caused her by running away on their wedding. He gets a chance to skip town, but how can he leave this poor, sick girl behind? She unwittingly has become his responsibility. Little acts of kindness turns up at her doorstep without her knowing who is responsible for them. All alone and unwell, she looks forward to this invisible stranger's gifts. The police tell her to look out for Varun and she is more than willing to. The jerk ruined her life. Varun hears about her crazy obsessive belief in the tree. Every day he watches the leaves fall with fear. What can he do? The night of the great storm. Pakhi stands at the window just as Varun steps out. They both see each other. She might be dying, but she owes her father this: She telephones the police. Varun knows what she might have done, but doesn't run away immediately. What he has to do wont take more than five minutes he reasons. But, as always, he underestimated painting. It takes him all night.

Pakhi makes peaces with the fact that she is going to die, but at least the man responsible for her grief is not going get away with his crimes.

The morning-after she looks out and there, to her shock, is a leaf still holding on. She doesn't step out or anything melodramatic. She turns in her bed and goes to sleep. There is peace on her face. Varun, of course, dies at the hands of the police and not because he asks for it (by pretending to have a gun). He runs, tries to escape. He wants to live, why shouldn't he want to? The police shoot after the running man. He dies. Maybe I don't like suicidal people. That's the other thing about The Last Leaf... the painter wasn't exactly keen on dying. Makes his sacrifice bigger, if you ask me.

Lacing the O Henry story with the fall of the Bengal Zamindar was a good thing but it only lent itself atmospherically to the film. I did not know anything about that time in our history, so it was initially very interesting... especially since we watched it from the zamindar's point of view. I liked how beautifully the sense of loss, that fall from power permeates the post-interval part. I feel that the writers had a great Zamindar story that they tried to marry to The Last Leaf. But two wonderful stories don't an epic make.

On a side note: How random was the Sonakshi and Ranveer's scene with the 'Kya likh rahi ho'? Was it to give us that (to repeat the same word) epic feeling. The VO in the trailers felt like they were trying too hard and in the film the exchange was quite random. She pulls out her diary to write, if memory serves right, just after they've made love. Was reference to her writing a hat-tip to Charulata?

Raanjhanaa (with five 'a's, you'd expect it to be a topper, but!)

People who've liked Raanjhanaa insist that Kundan is an exact representation of Benarasi youth. 'That is how boys there love!' Kundan, still in school, follows Zoya everywhere. He could have found a million ways to tell her how he feels, but what he chooses to do is:
1) hold her hand in the middle of a crowded street and ENJOY getting slapped.
2) Slit his wrist when she says she doesn't feel that way about him.

This is a stalker and there are stalkers everywhere, in all parts of India. But surely in no town, not even in Bollywood Benaras, should they be romanticised the way Kundan is. Kundan isn't an anti-hero either. He IS the hero. Anand Rai makes sure of that by
1) having Kundan turn over a new leaf after Abhay's character is beaten up and
2) having every single character forgive him once they're exposed to the blinding glow of his pure heart.
Abhay Deol's sister who watches her bro get beaten tells her parents that if not for Kundan, Abhay would be dead. It is only when Abhay finally dies (smartly not shown) that she decides to give Kundan a couple of cold stares. But Kundan serves food at the Langar and who can stay mad at him after that, right? Remember how Abhay wakes up from his coma long enough to tell Kundan: no hard feelings, these chicks na, ruin our life? And Swara, after being stood up on their wedding, still loves him!!?? Kundan is the hero. If anything, he is a victim of louve.

A good question to ask is if Anand (with an extra 'a' somewhere, I forget) was so determined to make Kundan a hero, why didn't he go with conventional characterisation? Why give him 'grey shades' only to spend the whole second half white-washing? I believe Anand Rai is a bit upset with today's intolerance towards what was once acceptable in his growing up years. He wants to know: Is it really such a bad thing for a boy to threaten to kill himself for a girl? For him to bleed in front of her, till she agrees she loves him? Is it such a terrible thing when a boy publicly grabs a girl and threatens her even though she's made it clear she doesn't feel the same way? And what is the big deal if he uses someone else's feelings for him to exact revenge on the one who rejected him? Must we hate a person for doing all this? No, says Anand Rai, you must not. Such a person is still a lovely human being and you will see that the ones he hurt don't deserve our pity either.

Anand Rai uses three tools, in the form of characters, to achieve this.
1) The best friend, the one with the funny lines,
2) Zoya, whose actions too are not beyond questioning, and
3) Swara Bhaskar, who loves Kundan from when she was a toddler to like forever.
Never mind that a person who slits his wrists at the drop of a hat is most unlikely to have a loyal best friend as much in love with him as Swara Bhaskar's character is. What puzzled me most was why Zoya tolerated Kundan's presence on campus for as long as she did? Here, the writing is clever and I am only pretending to be impressed. To distract us from the impossibility of true friendship between the two, the friend is given humour. And to justify Kundan's ill-treatment of Swara she is made unlady-like almost autistic. Finally, Zoya, whose love of her life was killed because she refused Kundan, seeks revenge so late in the film that it feels irrelevant and actually mean!

I never in my life have slapped someone and then turned around to smile at the person, so I can't say I understand Zoya. Apparently Benarasi women also behave unlike the rest of humanity. Why else would she allow Kundan to hang around her after he openly threatens her on the street? Why does she think maligning an innocent man's image is the only way to refuse a marriage proposal? And what was the idea behind asking your boyfriend to pretend to be a Muslim? Was no one in her family even curious about Abhay's family? Is Benaras, in convoluted Benarasi logic, so forward thinking that the orthodox Muslim family is okay to have the groom-to-be live with them till the wedding and be the sole representative of his entire family?

So, I don't like Kundan's character, or in fact, anyone else's. But that shouldn't have made me dislike the film as much as I did. I've seen other films in which the lead characters sickened/ annoyed me or were people I wouldn't be friends with: Clockwork Orange, Perfume, Raging Bull and so on. Plenty of films in which lead characters commit an unforgivable crime, seek redemption, win our sympathy but must still die: In Bruges, Dead Man Walking, Chamber, etc. Raanjhanaa's story is terrible because it was built with the sole purpose of convincing us that Kundan is a good guy. There isn't a plot at all! Had Zoya, like a normal human being, confronted him the minute she sees him in DU, several story possibilities open up. Maybe we'd have stepped into her shoes to see what it takes to forgive a man who was responsible for so much grief in your life. But since it was important to make her unreasonable, like apparently all women are, we are fed a fantastical tale of student leaders taking on the CM by merely wishing it. So we have a climax that's crazier than the character's relationship with each other. Zoya decides to blow up a rally to kill ONE man. And then confess to it at a press conference. How hard is it to get hold of some poison, lady? And now, having finally become a terrorist and gone crazy, she understands Kundan better (I suppose, I just don't understand the hospital scene otherwise) and she makes peace with him.

The girl who broke teenage Anand Rai's heart for the good-looking stud of the class has a lot to answer for. First Tanu Weds Manu and now this. Girls use boys who love them to get the boys they love. The boy getting used finally has ENOUGH of it and tells the girl off. And thus the girl is reformed by the self-sacrificing love of the boy. God know why, but it is certainly Anand Rai's big fantasy.

My notes while watching Yeh Jawani Hai Dewani

1. Why can't Kabir (aaaa) be nice to step mom? Is it only to give some 'backstory'? An obtuse way of giving his character depth?

2. Must Naina wear glasses?

3. Kalki's scene with the fat boy: what about her is really wild? All I can see is that she is ready to expose her reed thin legs.

4. a) Why is Naina standing petrified on the platform? Would have made sense if she had been forced to undertake this journey. Which also makes her 'always seen studying' work.

4. b) Naina should have won the race to the top. No reason why Kabir had to.. unless it was the only way the writers could think of to show 'chemistry'. Also the scene by the bon fire should have been funnier, wittier. When she walks into the party, it should be hard for her or at least alien. It isn't clear what specific thing she overcome to finally fit in. Just that Kabir says she's cool?

5. Why would he have a book with him on the night trek?

6. Make their 'hi, how are you?' are recurrent thing.

7. The mention of bananas and apples makes the teenage boys laugh. Aspirational: he gets the hot white girls.

8. A mention that 'she didn't wait either' to seem fair to both sexes. Convenient.

9. Why should someone come up to him and ask him 'what are you thinking?'

10. The number of people who speak with an accent.

11. Random promotions from camera man to host: aspirational

12. Why should he have lost touch with his friends? Why not show how DP (Naina) was never really part of his circle. Or she chooses not to stay in touch

13. Why would aditi marry a complete loser? Ah... To make it look like it is set up for a run away.. but it is not. Cool.

14. Nice touch abt not knowing where he is... which city. Happens.

15. Naina's pearl of wisdom not bad at all: We don't have to cover everything on the list.

16. How many times is Naina going to dip her hands and feet in water? Is it that hot?

17. It is okay for Kabir to feel up other women. But if Naina so much as drinks with another man, he gets violent.

18. Band Baja moment.

19. Why don't they talk after the kiss?

20. Logic cover-up: break into a song after the wedding. Don't stay with the sadness.

21. Logic cover-up: How does he make up with his step mom? Her speech should have come in earlier. And has nothing to do with their issues. She comforts him! Like his losing a dad is a bigger deal than her losing her husband and her step son not even check on her even once.

22. Kabir's coming back to Naina is such a non event.

23. So what was Kabir big issue in life: NOTHING.