Alvel's blog

The reason that Zenda may appeal to any Indian person no matter if their political leanings are different from those of the director (for I suspect director Avdhoot Gupte to be some sort of Hindu Nationalist, if not an outright one) is that it comes to the same conclusions that almost every Indian man of a certain age has come to; that Indian politics is beyond repair, sunk under the weight of corruption and shifty politicians out to fulfill their own agendas and that the facade of welfare of the Indian peoples to be a very attractive but empty promise. This attitude might be considered defeatist were we not aware (too aware) of the situation in Maharashtra (and by extension India) and if politics wasn’t in a state of such stagnation.

Zenda changes names but it would be clear to any Marathi person that this story is about the Thackerays with a sideways dig at Narayan Rane. Inspired by the real life fracturing of Shiv Sena (Jan Sena in the film) into two after the shunning of Raj Thackeray in favour of Udhav by Balasaheb, the character inspired by Raj, Rajesh Sarpotdar (played by Rajesh Shringarpure) is incredibly accurately portrayed, not only in terms of the acting but also in turn of his flip-flopping for want of political power. Being a Hindu nationalist himself, Gupte’s critic of the movement is different from other left-leaning sources. Because he believes in the message, he illustrates how the party leaders fail believers like him by way of two characters Santya (Santosh Juvekar) and Umesh (Siddharth Chandekar). The latter thinks with the forming of the Maharashtra Samrajya Sena (film stand-in for the Maharashtra Navanirmaan Sena) his ideals will finally be matched by the party leader and he will finally be witness to the glorious ‘Hindu Rashtra’ of Saavarakar. The former however remains committed to the Jan Sena. Both of them, no matter what they do are bound to get betrayed by their party. They talk among themselves of betrayal and fidelity, but don’t seem to realise it is their political leaders who are the infidels.

Umesh changes allegiance to go with Rajesh Sarpotdar but quickly realises this is no promised land. His objections start with the flag, when the leader decides to incorporate the green colour (the Muslim colour) into the flag. His objections reach a crescendo with the most repulsive scene in the film. In his want of votes, Rajesh strikes up an alliance with a Muslim leader. This Muslim leader is equated in his personal actions with that of a Jihadi leader (Gupte not being the first or last to do this) and he orders Umesh to hold his spittoon for him, spitting into it with some of it landing on Umesh’s hand. Then Gupte places a montage of Umesh trying to get the sting, the shame, the stench of that off his hand, washing his hands repeatedly, it somehow being implied as if he wouldn’t have felt such shame if a Hindu had spit on his hand. On the one hand (no pun intended) this is as I said a very repulsive scene Islamophobia and Hindutva in all it’s inglorious glory. But on the other hand it is a powerful depiction of the whore-ness of our politics leaders even if it is problematic in execution.

As for the directing itself, for a first time director who is mainly a musician it is not bad, though nothing compliment-worthy either. Sometimes Gupte irritatingly starts off exterior shots with zoomed out ratios but this is a minor complaint, the rest of the film using standard angles and shots. Nothing to imply Gupte is out of his depth.

It is almost pointless to say Zenda has aged well since it is a film about politics done reasonably well and politics doesn’t change much , at least not in the span of ten-odd years. But it is instructive to see the film in light of the 2019 Vidhansabha elections in Maharashtra as well as the political trajectory of Raj Thackeray. First, Raj Thackeray who as depicted in the film seems to change alliances on a whim depending on what can get him the most votes or, let’s face it, what can keep him in the limelight and relevant for since an initial hopeful campaign in 2009 and a victory in the Nashik municipal elections his importance has trailed off. His party lost Nashik just as quickly as it had gained it and newspapers just use his quotes nowadays as click bait (print bait?). Is he supporting or against Modi right now? I couldn’t tell you and whatever the answer is right now I am sure it would be different in six months. But that’s just the political side of him, but what the film excels at in depicting his character is the deep-lying insecurity masked by the hard exterior. In one of his first scenes we see him humiliate and mentally abuse a North Indian servant of his and he impresses his audience with the sheer forcefulness of his personality. But the exterior cracks and you see the frail man hungry for some, any power. Umesh’s growing impatience at him represents the people, his core voting block losing faith in him. In these scenes he is like a little child or a hapless man pleading with Umesh to have confidence in him ,that nothing’s changed, he will realise all their faith in him and deliver all their promises. Similarly, the real Raj Thackeray for all his so-called hard-hitting and blistering speeches is mostly content with going after Bollywood celebrities, asking for the removing of Pakistani actors from films, choosing something this irrelevant because he knows that’s the only way nowadays he can stay in the headlines.

If Zenda wasn’t prescient enough to predict the rise of the BJP (it’s focus is squarely on the Thackerays and party members) it does reinforce the fact that even with this new force in Maharashtrian politics things remain much the same. In the chaotic aftermath of the Vidhansabha elections in 2019 as the media reported feverishly on every development and every meeting and every possible alliance and every accusation and every interview with a lower level leader it was clear that nobody was in the right. The swinging of Ajit Pawar from first BJP to Shiv Sena and Congress, forced us to remind ourselves how much we are in the dark about the inner workings of the traditional leaders and families that seem to decide the future of the state without once caring for the man on the street. It also confirmed that there is no ‘major’ left-leaning political party in Maharashtra. To be fair there are no leftists in Zenda either which seems like an accurate representation of the political landscape in Maharashtra.

In summary, Zenda despite being Hindu-nationalist aligned should be seen for it’s quality of parody and the helplessness it shares with the common man about politics.

The comparison Imtiaz Ali has had to live with throughout his career is Yash Chopra. It’s a fair comparison to make as they share several common traits, both in themes as well a certain proclivity towards Punjab as the homeland and Europe as the go-to exotic location. He may also be seen as filling the gap left by him in the way Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar haven’t. But the romantic in Chopra’s films was always a romantic, his mission being the achievement of his object of affection or in some cases, juggling different objects. In contrast, the protagonist in Ali’s films have to find the romantic in themselves, or the romance existing in their periphery that they are blind to see. Most of the time they remain unsure about their object of affection, sometimes unsure as to who they are.

So there’s an influence of Yash Chopra here and maybe some of Mahesh Bhatt too and yet his voice is distinctive enough to not break into the traditional Bollywood mold, like any other for-hire gun at Dharma or Yashraj. His films are symbolic of the tug-and-push of Bollywood during the 21st century, retaining it’s melodramatic sensibilities as well as the song-and-dance numbers but also catching up with the outside world, finding protagonists engaged in menial jobs and the unglamorousness of their life, rejecting Bollywood’s traditional upstanding moral-having protagonist for someone less sure of their morals and direction. Ali also chooses to give new blood chance in his films (to varying results) furthering emphasising the unsure young millennial in the 21st century. This mindset of being stuck in a rut is never developed into it’s logical conclusion of a critique of capitalist society. His films remain stubbornly non-political, his art vs. money agenda seeming childish. But the childishness isn’t entirely misplaced since his films do deal with the very primal instinct of romance. Romance is ingrained not manufactured and it is this romance that is hidden underneath that must come out. So, perhaps arguing that romance is natural and the pursuit of material things unnatural, he critiques materialism if not ever reaching capitalism.

Ali’s films are unimaginable without their soundtracks and if I was in the habit of grading films, they would be graded differently from the film proper. He brings out the best from Pritam, while making the best use of A. R. Rahman since Mani Ratnam (in Hindi films at least). One underrated quality of a Bollywood director is how he ingrains songs into his narrative. It’s hard to imagine a commercial Bollywood director not facing this difficulty (Zoya Akhtar has talked about it) but Ali has no such problems. He’s a master integrator of songs, increasing the value of the songs never making them feel out of place. His picturisation of Agar Tum Saath Ho has been claimed by many to be the best picturised Bollywood song ever, and while I wouldn’t go that far it is masterful (every song in Tamasha is well-placed and pictured).

All’s career, critically speaking seems to be going in a downward direction, both of his newest films being ravaged by the critics. I will however attempt to give context to the whole of Ali’s career by chronologically charting the progression of the Ali protagonist and how he has changed with the times as Ali’s career itself gets old and perhaps it forces Ali to strip away the romantic sheen a little to find the cynicism old age brings.

Socha Na Tha (2005)

Socha Na Tha, as is often with debut films, is the most conventional of Ali’s films. One imagines such a film would easily find a place at Dharma Studios. The music, too is pretty conventional and the weakest of any Ali film. The film could easily have done with 20-30 minutes less, the repetitive narrative adding to the film’s conventionality. Some of the acting is suspect, particularly from Apoorva Jha and surprisingly Abhay Deol too. Ayesha Takia comes of better than Deol, although that certainly isn’t the case when the rest of their careers are concerned. The main character played by Deol, doesn’t nearly have the pull that Ali’s subsequent protagonists would have. There’s no romance in him, or if there is he doesn’t let it come to the fore, always hiding behind a curtain of misplaced joviality.

And yet even with all these problems, when the opening notes of Yaara Rab start you are glad to have spent time with these characters. Yaara Rab is the best song in the film and it’s a nice bookend to the journey. I say nice because that’s what this film is, never transcending nice to become fully romantic or emotionally resonant. But nice has it’s worth too and the film does it’s job with admirable non-sentimentality. Deol here has the confused upper-middle class 20 something look and all the problems or say, the non-problematic problems that come with this lifestyle of confused uncaringness. He’s the type who can reliably fall back on his father’s business if things go too sour, but this cushion may be what leads him to seek trouble. His critique of existing social structures is not entirely visible behind the cute-sy exterior but it’s there. The film though seemingly contradicts itself by first making an impassioned plea for the forging of a Catholic and Hindu marriage (in an admirably well-written sequence) only to then turn around and go for the Hindu girl that his family had selected for him in the first place. Perhaps the Christian girl didn’t give the same sense of rebelliousness as defying your family again and again and perhaps the Catholic family, despite all the differences is part of the same social structure. Or it maybe as simple as him underestimating Takia’s character in the first place for she is fortnightly yes, but also too ready to admit her own shortcomings and is noticeably younger than Deol (Takia was 16 years old when she signed on) but then later realising she is the type of woman you can really spend your life with. Takia has an angelic face and it might be hard not to fall in love with her, so we don’t fault Deol’s character. A fixture of the plot is the loyalty Takia’s character feels towards her family for taking care of her, her parents having died. This slots the film firmly into Bollywood schmaltz territory and is in stark contrast to subsequent Ali films where the heroine is, at least through the hero’s lens, just as much looking for liberation and just as much willing to rebel as him.

Socha Na Tha is pretty much Ali still paving the way for for his more artsy films and trying to find his directorial voice but it’s still inoffensively Bollywood enough to warrant one’s attention.

Jab We Met (2007)

Someone like Ali isn’t in the business of making ‘perfect’ films. Now I don’t mean  perfect in the sense of greatness, I mean it more in the sense of ‘lacking in flaws’, those films adjudged to be completely consistent in tone and mood and message and hailed as flawless classics and masterpieces. Ali is simply too Bollywood-y and boyish for that. His imperfections are however what make Ali such a maddeningly watchable director. Jab We Met maybe his most flawless film and most acclaimed but I wouldn’t say it’s his best film, though it’s close.

Shahid Kapoor’s character is the first in a line of Ali protagonists down on life who have to be rescued by women and later save the woman himself as a sort of emotional repayment of debt. The heroine here is Kareena Kapoor, in a performance even most of her detractors admit she was a perfect fit for. She had played the bubbly character before, heck you could say she had only played bubbly characters before and that’s the only character she can play, but here Ali adds a quirkiness that takes Kapoor to her intolerable extreme, but in the process also makes her more human and sets her up for her tragedy.

The leading couple were dating at the time and it is reflected in the crackling chemistry. Only Ranbir and Deepika in Tamasha come close to matching them in another Ali film. The flirtatious Kareena slowly breaks Shahid out of his shell, and we see him too start to play her game. We first see the wounded kitten side of Shahid’s character, and Kareena is at first the free spirit, the breath of fresh air to get Shahid out of his funk. We learn later Kareena’s character is also manipulative and she is using Shahid as for her own ends, but by that time he doesn’t care because he likes being used, to give up control for a while. He uses her in a way too, to take his mind off the job and the ex-girlfriend, to re-find his will to live. This is taken to it’s logical extreme when she is shown to have had such a positive impact on him that he now excels in business and seems to be okay with having to leave without her (he might be developing schizophrenia the rate at which he hallucinates about her) until plot mechanics kick in and there’s a reconciliation. This is the most soothing section of the film, Ali developing a melancholic rhythm which is him at his best. The way Tum Se Hi is shot, it could stand in for the entirety of the main character’s psychosis.

Other song picturisations are well done too. Nagada Nagada maybe unabashedly designed to be a party number, but it also serves as Shahid’s embracement of both Kareena and her loud stereotypical Punjabi family. And the character’s embracement also signifies Ali’s adoption of Punjab as a second homeland. But perhaps it’s Bollywood that has adopted Punjabi-ness and it’s Ali’s adoption of Bollywood-ian idea of romance and culture. And that is Jab We Met, a little modern, a little progressive, the first application of Ali’s authoral or artistic voice which while defiantly looking ahead is still looking over it’s shoulder not ready to sever ties with the past.

Love Aaj Kal (2009)

I first saw Love Aaj Kal a short time after it was initially released and I have seen it two or three times since and yet the film is strangely forgettable to me. Half of that can be attributed to the film’s past sequences, when Rishi Kapoor’s character was younger but also because I don’t think the film pulls off it’s modern love thesis as astutely as it thinks it does. Despite being more frank and more openly engaging with relationship dynamics it still feels like a regression from Jab We Met. I seem to hold the unique position where I prefer the 2020 version.

Jai (Saif Ali Khan) and Meera (Deepika Padukone) are so hip and modern they reek of desperation on Ali’s part. The problem wouldn’t be so magnified if the script wasn’t so focused on making every piece of dialogue sound as if it’s coming from a foreign-returned who can’t stop yapping about his trip. Annoying as his character is Saif pulls it off well. It’s Deepika who struggles. Deepika is at her best when she is putting upon a character like in Chennai Express or Ram Leela but is off-putting when she is playing a version of herself. She never really seems comfortable with the dialogue, he delivery coming up halfway between hip and the typical Juhi Chawla-like Bollywood heroine.

But the modern sequences are still bearable compared to the past section. Giselle Monteiro is even more of a misfire and predicts the failure of Nargis Fakhri in Rockstar. It’s Bollywood’s fascination with white faces, acting ability or authenticity be damned, that is so irritating about Bollywood ever since they moved on from the angry young man Masala films of the 70s and 80s to glossy over-priced modern fairytales. I don’t mind the fact that Ali decides to give opportunities to newcomers, it’s just his conception of how an heroine should look like is so narrow. And it’s not like the character is from the high-class milieu that Ali sets most of his films in. She’s a neighbourhood sweetheart, a character that is very ill-equipped to be played by Monteiro.

And yet it could hardly have been saved by a better heroine. The section is exactly like a film that the young Rishi Kapoor or maybe a young Amir Khan would star in, but it also comes equipped with the same flat writing. It’s not a problem when the film is a full 2-3 hours and you can bank on the charisma of the leads and occasional songs. However, here in a truncated version, with next to no chemistry between the leads the characters and their motivations come off as shallow.

The music by Pritam is one of the saving graces of the film, along with Khan’s and Kapoor’s performances, although even then for me the soundtrack veers towards more chartbuster-y territory than being soulful. It’s probably Pritam’s weakest album for Ali but that’s not such a bad thing when the rest of the collaborations are so excellent.

I am not completely down on the film. There’s a montage mid-way through that highlights the main character’s loneliness and boils down the theme of the film to a few short minutes. Plus, like Tamasha instead of any social moorings, the protagonists are weighed down by their own ambitions and decisions. But the past sections and modern sections (the aaj and the kal) never quite gel together to become the romantic film of our times (or those times now) it wishes to be.

Rockstar (2011)

If Rockstar the film did not exist, then it would be wholly possible to construct the film in our minds just by listening to Rockstar the album. There’s only the rare film where the music is so in tune to the rhythms, moods and atmosphere of the film while at the same time being an own breathing entity of it’s own. That’s not to say I am not glad Rockstar the film exists. On the contrary, I am very glad this film exists because not only did it give us that soundtrack and that performance from Ranbir Kapoor it’s also the best film of Ali’s career.

Just like when Jonathan Rosenbaum postulated that Taxi Driver has 4 autuers working in their own way to stamp authority on the film, Rockstar too has multiple autuers. Those are namely Imtiaz Ali the director, Ranbir Kapoor, the actor, A. R. Rahman the composer, Irshad Kamil the lyricist and Mohit Chauhan the singer. However, if Rosenbaum was suggesting the four autuers of Taxi Driver as working somewhat independently of each other, then in Rockstar it’s a kind of collective autuership, which may feel like it’s betraying the spirit of autuer theory itself but it’s clear when watching the film itself. These five people become the voice of Jordan, in Chauhan’s literally while in the others’ cases figuratively. This sense is heightened when Chauhan sounds so much like Kapoor. Having just one singer be the voice of Jordan seems like an easy decision in hindsight but getting Chauhan seems like a masterstroke. It’s hard to imagine anyone else being the voice of Jordan.

Like one of Rahman’s other greatest Hindi albums Dil Se, Rockstar is a film about obsessive love. It ends with a Rumi quote (which is also used as a lyric in one of the songs) and has the soul of a sufi. It contains the type of love that is only found in Bollywood, the type where your entire being is dictated by this love to the point that this love heals, no not just the soul but physically heals. The film cemented Ranbir as the tragic hero of our generation and Ali as the expert purveyor of grand romantic stories. It was one of the defining films of my early teenage years. I knew a schoolboy who used to be reduced to tears just by hearing the first notes of Tum Ho.

Rockstar is not as political as Dil Se but it’s still the closest Ali’s films get to being rebellious on a political scale. There’s of course Sadda Haq with it’s images of student revolts and hippie-type gatherings. One part of the song was shot at Dharamshala and people there came out with the banner Free Tibet. Tibet however was blurred by the Censor Board. It’s a good thing they didn’t blur speech in Freedom of Speech. But there’s also the fact that Heer is Kashmiri. She’s introduced as an unattainable object who the whole college drools over but with the full knowledge she is as unobtainable as an angel. Her face is startlingly white, she moves around in her own circle of English-speaking Hi-Fi posh students. Her marriage has already been decided and she doesn’t even look at a guy. If she was like what her outside appearance would leave everyone to believe, she wouldn’t have caused Jordan the pain he was looking for. But she is just like any other college dude or rather just like Jordan when it comes down to base impulses. Somehow this high-class Kashmiri with her soft feminine features is a reflection of this trashy Delhi boy.

Our first look at Janardan (not Jordan), we see him get beat up by the police. He is performing in front of an unwilling audience. You get the sense that he is performing for his own sake, that performing does give him joy. He is craving for attention but the police are the only ones who give him any. Later when he turns into Jordan the paparazzi are at his door daily, he gets to perform in front of thousands of adoring fans, he has fame incalculable and yet this is of not importance to him without his lady love. This frustration comes out when he reverses the initial beating by the police and in turn beats up a policeman himself. When he is arrested he holds up a middle finger, the camera eyeing him like a demi-god. He has become a husk of anger and that has made him endearing to the youth who have their own anger, anger that they can’t justify but which finds voice in him.

When discussing Rockstar, the big elephant in the room is Nargis Fakhri. She has been the proverbial what-if posed by cinephiles ever since the film released, whether her performance derails the film or whether a better actress could have elevated the film beyond it’s already dizzying heights. Personally, the only time she appears comfortable is when Heer is flirty or cheerful. Ask her to display an emotion however, any emotion be it anger, sadness, pain she clearly isn’t cut out. One or two of the scenes are downright laughable and when she is supposed to do the romance trope of turning her head away from her lover in sadness while holding his hands, it felt like parody. There’s no doubt that any semi-competent actress would have done the job better. Hell, Aditi Rao Hydari was right there in the cast. But would Ali have it any other way? My money is on not because it’s clear Heer is supposed to be Ali’s ideal of feminine beauty and otherworldliness. Look at his first choice for the part Kareena Kapoor (who obviously couldn’t be cast since she and Ranbir are first cousins). Both Kapoor and Fakhri have milk-white skins and ‘northern’ looks that feed into the inferiority complex of the normal brown-tinted Indian man. Heer and Jordan’s fates are interlinked and Ali leaves most of the dramatic heavy lifting to Jordan so that Ranbir is there to rescue any scene featuring the two.

When Rockstar gets going it does so at full throttle, like it’s protagonist. Any reactions the film draws are extreme and unlikely to change. For me, that cements the film as one of the great romances of our time.

Highway (2014)

Highway might feel like a 180-turn from Rockstar, going from the fanciful romanticism and tragedy of that film to a somewhat realist tale set in the heartland of Northern India. If the protagonist of that earlier film felt like he has no pathos to draw his art upon the protagonist here certainly doesn’t lack in that. But the central theme doesn’t change no matter if the gender of the protagonist or the circles in which they run are changed. Both the protagonists are looking to liberate themselves, even though the means, motivation and end goal are different. There’s similarity too in the fact that both of them have adulthood thrust upon them, forcibly yanking them from their home and the realization that their upbringing surely didn’t prepare them for it.

Veera’s (Alia Bhatt) story is more literal than in any other Ali film. Her journey is truly a journey because this is a road film, as stated by the title. Similarly, her rejection of family can, if not entirely then at least substantially be traced to one very significant event in her childhood. The inevitable catharsis provided by the opposite character Mahabir (Randeep Hooda), too is forcefully provided. If say Kareena’s character in Jab We Met was a foil to unwittingly change the course of Shahid’s character, then Hooda’s influence on Bhatt is 100% mitigated. But one has to wonder if Ali laying out the emotional turmoil going in Bhatt’s character in such a straightforward way doesn’t work to the detriment of the film. The pedophilia subplot does seem to prove a point of bonding between Veera and Mahabir but it’s also somewhat of an easy out. Was it not enough for Veera to be dissatisfied with her higher class social norm-following, routine concerns family like her counterparts in other Ali films? Her family goes out of the way to retrieve her once she’s kidnapped and do nothing when there’s a pedophile in the family preying on her. Is this because the pedophile has so much clout over the family that going against him would be sacrilege? Or is it a look away, he’s just family type of situation? Ali’s film seems to imply both but it gets somewhat muddled, adding to the feeling of the pedophilia subplot being tacky.

What the film does have working for it though is the acting. For once, Ali’s decision of casting a newcomer pays off (unlike the previous two attempts) and Bhatt, fresh-faced and eager to prove herself gives a performance that is in parts hysterical and vulnerable. Many have criticized her for the final outburst, but she is confronting her accuser. Surely that is the time to go a little overboard and Act. Hooda is sufficiently aloof (as he was during filming by his own admission) to be a mystery for Veera and the audience. It’s a typical sort-of hard man with a soft shell underneath character but Hooda has enough gravitas and enough surprising chemistry with Bhatt to make him a well-rounded character.

Ali and cinematographer Anil Mehta find some nice shots of the snow and scenery in Himachal Pradesh, further highlighting the superiority in Veera’s mind about the mountain life over the drab city life. The music obviously isn’t as central here as in Rockstar but A. R. Rahman is still on top form. Particularly Patakha Guddi is a strong representation of the title character, using the Jugni device. Jugni stands in for the songwriter making observations or in many cases her sad dealings with society and the advice she belts out from her experience. Veera is a Jugni too, an inexperienced uncultured girl who has to turn into a world-weary woman.

Highway may have it’s share of problems but coming as it does between Ali’s two best films it’s not a bad trip to take.

Tamasha (2015)

“A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it up and makes it again.” – Jean Renior

This could not more apply to Ali if it wanted to. Not just the making the same film over and over part, but also about the breaking up part. Re-watching Tamasha I found almost every plot point resembled another in a previous Ali film. There’s the pressure of family (and family business) of Socha Na Tha. There’s the routine of the modern office-going man of Love Aaj Kal (including an identical montage). The hero who loses (and regains his motivation) according to what’s happening in his romantic life in almost all his previous films. But he excels in the “breaking and making it again” part because despite the similarities, Ali always finds something fresh in his approach. Compare for example Rockstar and Tamasha. They are at heart the same film with Ranbir Kapoor giving the same type of performance. But Tamasha is also at the same time an inverse of Rockstar. In both films, Kapoor’s character finds inspiration in his lady love, but in Rockstar it’s the getting away of love that is the inspiration, while in Tamasha it’s the reclamation. In one art is pain and a representation of the failing of life that it can never hope to satisfy, in the other art is joy and the whole reason of being. I find Ali’s handling of the former approach to be more astute than the latter and that’s why I think Rockstar is the better film but Tamasha sometimes reaches those same heights even if it’s lows are more pronounced.

Tamasha starts out on a pretty note. After a flash-forward where the two main characters Ved (Ranbir Kapoor) and Tara (Deepika Padukone) are onstage performing a play (the problems with which I will get to) and there’s flashback sequences to demonstrate Ved’s love for stories. But the real story begins in Corsica. The photography is gorgeous (credit to Ravi Varman) and it presents Corsica as such a heaven that the tourism board there need not waste another penny on advertising, they need only to show the first half of the film. Bathed in sunlight, with some clever costume designing (the white and primary colour clothes of Ved and Tara allow the bright colours to bounce off them and create a glow that envelopes both characters) it presents Corsica as the ultimate destination for a holiday…… and for romance. The starting of Ved and Tara’s relationship is pure Bollywood fluff. After a chance meeting, our hero and heroine make a pact to reveal no personal information and to engage in wild make-believe. Of course, we all know that this is not going to last and Ali knows we know. What the protagonists have decided between them is not important it’s what they are masking is. For Ved and Tara, the other is their getaway to a side of themselves they are most comfortable with. For Ved this is a short-term arrangement for he is more realist. He knows this good side of him is not what is demanded of him (at least in the world he lives in). For Tara though there is no turning back. She falls in love with this side of herself, a love so strong it sustains her for 4 years. Ved makes Tara believe again, believe in fairytales. This love takes the quality of faith. Like Jordan taking residence in a Durga after his banishment from home in Rockstar, here again Ali treats love as faith. But the Ved she meets on the other side is a completely different Ved, one who has completely decided to mask the good side of him, the reverse of Corsica. He makes off-hand comments that don’t mean anything in relation, like “Companies are the new countries and countries are the new companies”. He checks his watch each time he leaves Tara’s home, not only to check the time I believe but as a reassurance that it’s still there, the materialistic clout he has gathered symbolised by the watch.

Ved has to find his good side again, but that’s not an easy task. It comes slowly at first, like not wearing his tie to work one day and it comes painfully too. Ali renders this journey beautifully with the help of montages and songs (Rahman and Kamil again doing superlative work) and sometimes montages within songs. The songs Heer to badi sad hai and Agar Tum Saath ho provide as counterparts to each other, the former chronicling Tara’s hope for her love and the latter as an impasse between Tara and Ved where their relationship stands on a ledge. Padukone is much better here than she was in Love Aaj Kal. Part of that is down to her own maturing as a performer but also because she is given a full-rounded character to play who appears closer to Ali’s heart. She and Ranbir have real chemistry which enhances the effect of Agar Tum Saath Ho.

It took me a few days to formulate what really rubbed me the wrong way about Tamasha’s problems. I knew what the problem immediately and it was the plays presented by Ved but what was so wrong with them? I realized that it was because they are glib and at the same time shallow as social media forwards. It is also irritating that Ved seems to become a successful playwright (?) overnight, as if all he had to do was quit his job and he would lead a happy and successful life. Perhaps it is explainable that Ved could not make this simple decision were it not for Tara and his love for her, but is it that necessary for Ali to show him playing in a huge playhouse with applause ringing around him? I would have much preferred an ending like that of Yes Boss (or the film it ripped off, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment) where just the protagonist’s decision to abandon his previous course gets him the lady love and renewed hope.

These are of course, just imperfections in a what is otherwise terrific film, even though they are not as negligible as Fakhri’s casting in Rockstar. But Tamasha is still quite heart-warming and winning.

Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017)

It is reasonable to expect a pairing of Shahrukh Khan and Imtiaz Ali to produce a grandiose romantic film and it would have been rather easy to go down that route. But what instead is offered is very downbeat and not really a romantic odyssey as much as it is about coming to terms with the failure of ambitions and ideals.

Sometimes, it helps to look at things chronologically. Kapoor in Tamasha and Khan in this film play basically the same character with the same need for a woman to redeem their character. Except both Khan and his character are a lot older, more pessimistic, more world-weary, more outwardly antagonistic. In Tamasha, the camera is in love with Corsica, while here the Europe here is photographed much in the same way Prague was in Rockstar ; beautiful but also shut off. Khan’s character Harry has become immune to Europe’s beauty and after leaving his home all those years back has found a longing for home. This longing becomes personified with the arrival of Sejal (Anushka Sharma) a typical Gujrati ben (but a modern one) who snaps him out of the deluge that his life has become.

Sometimes, Jhms feels like the first half of Dilwale Dhulania Le Jayenge stretched into a whole film. Like in that film the hero and heroine here roam Europe upon some pretext or the other with only each other as their company. This may have invariably worked against the film as the Europe backdrop, the combination of Ali and Khan, the summarily romantic storyline and a proven pairing in the form of Khan and Sharma promises a film much more in line with a typical late 90’s and early aughts SRK romance. But Khan has aged since then and he knows this and Ali knows this. Harry is pretty much the fusing of the Ali protagonist and Khan’s persona, a troubled man with the charm of Shahrukh Khan.

Jhms is much more of a romantic comedy than say Jab We Met or Love Aaj Kal. Ali does make time for some quiet introspective moments alongside the comedic ones, but the narrative here is much more leisurely, like Sejal inexplicably not in a hurry. Sharma is someone Khan clearly feels comfortable with, having done four films with her, and they are in control of their characters. Sharma has a stereotypical Gujarati accent but it just errs on the side of funny to be passable. Khan lets go the big persona and accepts a more subdued characterization. There are no in-jokes and callbacks here like has the trend been in his latter years career.

For all that the film moves smoothly though things come to a grinding halt in the last third. There’s an ill-judged (and insensitive) meeting with a criminal named Gas. It didn’t seem as rattling the second time I watched the film but it’s still unnecessary. The real narrative-halter though is a wedding of Harry’s best friend. Perhaps, it provided the opportunity for a nice dance number or Ali wanted to have the characters be in a comfortable place to discuss the shortcomings of their futures, but it just adds time on (and threatens to show Evelyn Sharma acting).

The ending however brings us right back in. Again, as down-low as the rest of the film instead of going for the usual hero interrupts wedding route, Ali goes for a more anti-climatic climax. And it works too because that’s the expectations that have been set up by the film. Such a romantic gesture and the bride running away with the hero is not what would have been in-line with the rest of the film, even if it would be in-line with Bollywood’s idea of romance. This is a story of two people (and it’s failings are when it introduces other characters) and that would have threatened turning the film into something it’s not. Instead, Ali trusts his heroine to be intelligent enough to come to this decision herself just like the hero. It’s an irregular ending even for Ali but it’s the right one.

One thing even the most severest of the film’s detractors can’t deny is the quality of the soundtrack. The music is breezy just like the narrative, though that’s not to say it is slight. Taking over from Rahman is a big task but Pritam manages well. Highlights include Hawayein and Butterfly at the end while Raula coming during the film’s lowest moment (the wedding sequence) is at least pleasant on the ears.

Jhms is strictly mid-tier Ali but I think Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (for all it’s qualities), if it was directed by Ali, would be considered mid-tier Ali so it’s still pretty good.

Love Aaj Kal (2020)

One word I didn’t use above was cynicism or cynical. That’s because Jhms is not really a cynical film. It still believes in the power of love, it’s power to change the course of lives in positive ways and the need of it for every human being. But this film suggests love is full of compromise, dependent on circumstance and experience. Ali’s previous films had all erred on the side of the young lovers. Here, the young lovers are seen for what they are; swept up in passion, they don’t understand their stupid decisions and the consequences of them. It argues against spur-of-the -moment life-changing decisions taken in the name of love.

In the first Love Aaj Kal, the Kal seemed a arbitrary and redundant, not informing on the Aaj scenes as well as Ali would have hoped. He is far more successful here. The parallel past track isn’t a story of some grand sweeping romance. Instead, it’s a cautionary tale told to the heroine Zoe (Sara Ali Khan) in a paternal tone (and Sara’s father was the lead in the first film, further highlighting the generational passage of love) to take her own lessons from his story. The present sequences don’t try to be the all-encompassing “this is how modern relationships in India are” commentary of the first film. Ali again goes with, if not newcomers then at least unproven, actors here. All three of them are serviceable, if not spectacular but given Ali’s propensity of casting the wrong actors for the wrong parts, this actually comes as a relief.

The key to Love Aaj Kal may be a montage situated in the middle of the film. Ali’s montages have always been like a summation of his themes and it’s no different here, but it’s where it is placed that adds the weight to this particular one. Arriving after Zoe has already had a meltdown at Veer’s (Kartik Aryan) house in front of his parents, it shows an alternative to the story told by Randeep Hooda and the grown-out-of-love parents whose problems get summarily passed on to Zoe and Veer. This montage again reinforces the point about not trusting the old notions about true love and mistaking teenage romances for life-long companions. In fact, the whole of the film seems to be arguing in favour of consideration when it comes to romance, which is a markedly different message from Ali’s previous films which did believe in old Bollywood-y notions of love. Is this because Ali as a director has grown up or his films have matured? Just one film is not enough to tell. His subsequent offerings will have something to say about this.

Both Jhms and this film received critical drubbings and failed financially. So it would be interesting to see what path Ali goes down in his future endeavours. Does he continue, as he did in his last two films, where sure love wins out in the end but it’s also a laboured love, a love with compromise and without the grandness that Bollywood (and Ali’s previous films) have perpetuated. I can understand somewhat the dismissal of Jhms for the failed Shahrukh Khan romance that it was (which in my mind is not such a bad thing) but the dismissal of this film leads me to believe that people think they have figured out Ali and they only see him as an outdated romantic who can’t deliver any more. But see a little bit further in his last two films and one would see a more constrained version of romance and the audience having already pegged him as a Yash Chopra-type expect to see more of the same as his earlier films. But still to me Ali remains a fantastic ‘Bollywood’ director in an era where other Bollywood romances are directed by dire directors like Mohit Suri and all the great directors are trying to move away from Bollywood’s idea of romance (case in point, Lootera which tried to be a anti-Bollywod romance to a fault). Ali remains perhaps the link between Old Bollywood and New Bollywood.

Known variously as Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet, Adela Has Not Had Dinner Yet and Dinner For Adela, this Czech film is very much in the vein of the Czech (or broadly Eastern European) comedies, not only of that time but through to the modern times but with a American-inspired storyline and characters. Nick Carter (Michal Dočolomanský) is actually a pulp character predating even Sherlock Holmes but he is long forgotten now. And there’s certainly a Mel Brooks vibe permeating throughout the film.

Nick Carter is a genius detective, appreciated by Sherlock Holmes and friends with Alfred Nobel. On a whim, he picks up a case assignment in Prague and that’s where the rest of the film takes place. This opening sequence is unfortunately, probably the best sequence in the film and where the film get it’s most laughs. There’s also the little tidbit of characters speaking Czech, but when they decide to go to Prague, Nick Carter has to learn Czech. That does not mean however that rest of the film is a lost cause or not capable of generating laughs.

Adela can be described as semi- unhinged. This seminess of the humour is sometimes frustrating, as is the hero’s romantic track with Naďa Konvalinková, which is perhaps a symptom of the same. One might assume from the poster that Konvalinková is Adela (she is not) and that she may have a prominent part (she does not). Additionally, she is all but sidelined in the climax and the resolution of the romantic arc is unsatisfying to say the least. The rest of the film though, a joke-a-minute affair is funny enough, though rarely downright hilarious. When the climax arrives you wish the whole film had been made at this register, as in the climax there is an burst of outrageousness that you feel has been chained for the rest of the film. The film is helped immensely by the prop work, done by Jan Švankmajer who fashions innovative gadgets. There’s particularly a hat that leads to a few brilliant gags.

Those knowledgeable about Bollywood, may see a few similarities with Abbas-Mustan’s best film, Baadshah. One sequence where the protagonist walks up a wall is present in both films. Rip-off merchants as they are, I can definitely see Abbas-Mustan lifting from this film, though how much they have (if any) is up for debate. But as it is in their best films they make the stuff they lift from better. I’ll end the review with a full-hearted recommendation for Baadshah and a three-quarters hearted recommendation for Adela.

Shiraz is not an epic in storytelling. It’s narrative doesn’t take twists-and-turns and include subplots only tangentially related to the main story. This is reflected in the film’s runtime, only one hour and forty-five minutes long, small compared to other epics made around the world at the time, like Metropolis or Napoleon. Shiraz is an epic in a technical sense with grand art design, costume design and choreography.

The story as I said is simple enough. A daughter of a princess is taken up by a potter after her mother is killed in a raid while they are travelling to North India. The princess is given the name Selima (Enakshi Rama Rau) and she grows up with the potter’s son Shiraz (producer Himansu Rai). Shiraz loves Selima but one day she is stolen away by slave traders and ends up in the harem of Prince Khurram (Charu Roy), who will later became the fifth Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. It’s up to Shiraz to rescue her now. The story of course is pure fiction allowing the director to throw forth hugely romantic and tragic characters into the mix of a plot that doesn’t make much narrative sense. Especially in the second act when the action shifts to the prince’s palace and there’s a rival for the prince’s affections, a lot of plot holes emerge in the resolution. But the plot makes sense on an emotional level, manipulating the characters to get them to the necessary positions for them to make emotional development and get in line with the director’s tragi-romantic vision.

The makers here are too intoxicated with the imagery of India (the varied geography, the palaces, the costumes, the elephants) to take any social standing, or at least make commentary on any of the issues of the time. The harem and the slave market are treated as just another part of the Mughal (and in large Muslim) culture of the time. What the film does have in spades though is the aforementioned exotic Indian imagery. The camera takes in the whole of the plain during the opening raid sequence. The costumes appear authentic and radiate on screen. The location shooting enhances the authenticity of the film and at the end the Taj Mahal is shot in wide shot showcasing it for the architectural marvel it is.

This wouldn’t have looked half as much epic if the film hadn’t been painstakingly restored by the British Film Institute. One advantage the team had was they had the original negative to work with which is preferable. The images look pristine, highlighting the incredible original camera work. The actors’ faces too are given a clarity that allow them to emote fully.

And then there’s the retroactive score, composes by Anoushka Shankar (daughter of Pandit Ravi Shankar) which becomes an integral part of the experience and is as much an important component as the camera work in this restored version. The music starts off traditionally with the tabla and the sitar playing a big part and I was afraid it would lead to a stereotypical score but the score evolves still using native Indian instruments for the most part but also using modern instruments to increase the tension in certain scenes. When the film starts losing a bit of steam in the second act, the score keeps us engaged.

German director Franz Osten directed a few more films in India before being extradited back to Germany by the British. I don’t know if his films influenced the later Bollywood epics or Bollywood’s obsession with Mughal royalty as a means of romantic storytelling but you can find various tropes in his films that still exist in Bollywood’s historical films.