Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Producer: Sony/ Columbia Pictures
Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Salman Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Zohra Sehgal
Producer: Sony/ Columbia Pictures
Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Salman Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Zohra Sehgal
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Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s latest offering, Saawariya, promised to be a unique love story. What it actually offers is, however, a frustratingly lifeless narrative with affected acting, artificially created emotions, and clichéd scenes & dialogues. There’s nothing distinctive, either positive or negative to make the film unique.
Saawariya is the story of a young singer Ranvir Raj (Ranbir Kapoor) who on arrival in a new town falls in love with a mysterious, dusky girl, Sakina (Sonam Kapoor), from a Muslim carpet weaving family. As it turns out, Sakina has already given her heart to an equally mysterious man-in-black, Imaan (Salman Khan). She knows nothing about Imaan who has disappeared with a promise to return for her on Eid. So while Raj keeps his hopes alive wooing Sakina, a prostitute Gulab (Rani Mukherjee) pines for Raj. In the end, despite everyone’s misgivings, Imaan returns on Eid and Sakina goes away with him. For love’s sake(!), Raj has to let Sakina go just as Gulab decides to turn her back on Raj.
From his first feature film, Khamoshi to his current work, Saawariya, one notices a gradual shift in Bhansali’s treatment of his themes. From telling a complex story in plain but sensitive manner (with a sprinkling of stylized scenes), he has moved to presenting simple stories that are ornately ‘mounted’ with dominant colour schemes and extravagant costumes and sets. Saawariya is a culmination of Bhansali’s near fetishistic obsession with huge, stylized sets (here, so much so that the entire film is claustrophobically shot in a series of an unoriginal mix of sets), colour schemes, and a star cast (in Saawariya, Bhansali himself plays one of the stars and also bills himself as the one ‘introducing’ star children in leading roles).
The film attempts to be a ‘musical fantasy’, unfolding a tale of love and sadness. To lend vibrancy and colour, Bhansali attempts to do an ‘Indian Moulin Rouge’, though by unimaginatively and pointlessly putting together a jumble of sets with Gothic architecture, Parisian Arc d’Triumph and Venetian gondolas as part of the landscape, Noorjahan and Buddha on the walls, Mona Lisa on the curtains, the RK banner as a logo over a shop (possibly as a homage to the late Raj Kapoor), and a long shot of this unnamed town that seems to be borrowed from one of the Hollywood’s fantasy blockbusters (Harry Potter?). The pervasive use of blue might have been ideal for a sad love story, but this film fails to evoke emotions to suit the overbearing colour scheme. The result is a blue cardboard town with characters cut out from various backgrounds and put there without much explanation.
The film’s screenplay and treatment fail miserably and all the mounted pageantry cannot save it. Saawariya’s ‘triangular’ love story is neither convincing nor engaging, and also because the basic plot uses all kinds of Bollywood clichés (if you slip into a nasty mood, it might actually be fun to spot a series of time-tested Bollywood masala traditions): the homeless hero, the motherly Anglo-Indian landlady (Zohra Sehgal), the honest prostitute, Hindu-Muslim lovers and Eid celebrations. The landlady’s character is a blatantly exploitative device to evoke emotions and the prostitute who loves the hero has been done to death in Bollywood cinema. It is not clear why Sakina gives coy looks and is clearly flirtatious with Raj and yet keeps pining for Imaan. Also, Imaan is this mysterious character who appears out of the blue one stormy night and disappears with a promise and a false address. His occupation is kept deliberately suspicious.
The music of Saawariya is uninspiring, especially for a film that is a romance and a musical. The cinematographer has a one point agenda – to make everything look pretty (in a blue-green hue) and he has tried giving his best, even in strange scenes like the heroine taking a dust shower from used carpets and the hero flashing himself from his house's window!
The Bollywood star-kids, Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor have worked hard on their roles and give credible if affected performances (Bhansali is known to extract good performances from his actors). Nonetheless, Ranbir and the director could have avoided the Kapoor-family references in the film; they are all tacky. Rani Mukherjee produces some interesting moments. Zohra Sehgal stands out with an eccentric performance of an old woman full of life and zest. But these performances hang like good-looking but dismembered limbs in a film where nothing else works.
The first signs that the films hasn’t worked with the ‘masses’ will perhaps signal other filmmakers of this ilk to not just look outwards on what would certainly sell and plainly and assuredly keep reinventing the masala features of Bollywood films.
It would be interesting to know the idea that Sanjay Leela Bhansali pitched and sold to Sony/ Columbia Pictures for their first Indian venture. Were they then aware that the film is based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short story, ‘White Nights’ (and for which there exists an estimable adaptation in the form of the Italian master, Luchino Visconti’s White Nights [Le Notti Bianche; 1957]?). Bhansali, who took more than two years, tens of crores of Rupees and multiple stars to turn a well-known story with a worthy precedent to an uninspiring fare called Saawariya, needs to seriously rethink his aesthetic strategies.
Saawariya is the story of a young singer Ranvir Raj (Ranbir Kapoor) who on arrival in a new town falls in love with a mysterious, dusky girl, Sakina (Sonam Kapoor), from a Muslim carpet weaving family. As it turns out, Sakina has already given her heart to an equally mysterious man-in-black, Imaan (Salman Khan). She knows nothing about Imaan who has disappeared with a promise to return for her on Eid. So while Raj keeps his hopes alive wooing Sakina, a prostitute Gulab (Rani Mukherjee) pines for Raj. In the end, despite everyone’s misgivings, Imaan returns on Eid and Sakina goes away with him. For love’s sake(!), Raj has to let Sakina go just as Gulab decides to turn her back on Raj.
From his first feature film, Khamoshi to his current work, Saawariya, one notices a gradual shift in Bhansali’s treatment of his themes. From telling a complex story in plain but sensitive manner (with a sprinkling of stylized scenes), he has moved to presenting simple stories that are ornately ‘mounted’ with dominant colour schemes and extravagant costumes and sets. Saawariya is a culmination of Bhansali’s near fetishistic obsession with huge, stylized sets (here, so much so that the entire film is claustrophobically shot in a series of an unoriginal mix of sets), colour schemes, and a star cast (in Saawariya, Bhansali himself plays one of the stars and also bills himself as the one ‘introducing’ star children in leading roles).
The film attempts to be a ‘musical fantasy’, unfolding a tale of love and sadness. To lend vibrancy and colour, Bhansali attempts to do an ‘Indian Moulin Rouge’, though by unimaginatively and pointlessly putting together a jumble of sets with Gothic architecture, Parisian Arc d’Triumph and Venetian gondolas as part of the landscape, Noorjahan and Buddha on the walls, Mona Lisa on the curtains, the RK banner as a logo over a shop (possibly as a homage to the late Raj Kapoor), and a long shot of this unnamed town that seems to be borrowed from one of the Hollywood’s fantasy blockbusters (Harry Potter?). The pervasive use of blue might have been ideal for a sad love story, but this film fails to evoke emotions to suit the overbearing colour scheme. The result is a blue cardboard town with characters cut out from various backgrounds and put there without much explanation.
The film’s screenplay and treatment fail miserably and all the mounted pageantry cannot save it. Saawariya’s ‘triangular’ love story is neither convincing nor engaging, and also because the basic plot uses all kinds of Bollywood clichés (if you slip into a nasty mood, it might actually be fun to spot a series of time-tested Bollywood masala traditions): the homeless hero, the motherly Anglo-Indian landlady (Zohra Sehgal), the honest prostitute, Hindu-Muslim lovers and Eid celebrations. The landlady’s character is a blatantly exploitative device to evoke emotions and the prostitute who loves the hero has been done to death in Bollywood cinema. It is not clear why Sakina gives coy looks and is clearly flirtatious with Raj and yet keeps pining for Imaan. Also, Imaan is this mysterious character who appears out of the blue one stormy night and disappears with a promise and a false address. His occupation is kept deliberately suspicious.
The music of Saawariya is uninspiring, especially for a film that is a romance and a musical. The cinematographer has a one point agenda – to make everything look pretty (in a blue-green hue) and he has tried giving his best, even in strange scenes like the heroine taking a dust shower from used carpets and the hero flashing himself from his house's window!
The Bollywood star-kids, Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor have worked hard on their roles and give credible if affected performances (Bhansali is known to extract good performances from his actors). Nonetheless, Ranbir and the director could have avoided the Kapoor-family references in the film; they are all tacky. Rani Mukherjee produces some interesting moments. Zohra Sehgal stands out with an eccentric performance of an old woman full of life and zest. But these performances hang like good-looking but dismembered limbs in a film where nothing else works.
The first signs that the films hasn’t worked with the ‘masses’ will perhaps signal other filmmakers of this ilk to not just look outwards on what would certainly sell and plainly and assuredly keep reinventing the masala features of Bollywood films.
It would be interesting to know the idea that Sanjay Leela Bhansali pitched and sold to Sony/ Columbia Pictures for their first Indian venture. Were they then aware that the film is based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short story, ‘White Nights’ (and for which there exists an estimable adaptation in the form of the Italian master, Luchino Visconti’s White Nights [Le Notti Bianche; 1957]?). Bhansali, who took more than two years, tens of crores of Rupees and multiple stars to turn a well-known story with a worthy precedent to an uninspiring fare called Saawariya, needs to seriously rethink his aesthetic strategies.
1 comment:
More of bollywood masala items -
We see unmanned boats - one hardly sees any people in the film, except when it’s time to dance.
Raj who is seen as a do-gooder is actually good for nothing. He gives hope to battered prostitutes and their lonely babies by promising angels and then they never actually come!
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