It’s impossible for me not to react warmly to the first half, fleeting scenes of Delhi University, and a departure from the usual way Indian film makers show ‘college life’. The scenes set in the university felt real, with all sorts of in-jokes about friends who linger around only for samosas, and the class wars on campus. It reminded me a bit of the adventures of lovely Miss Chamko in Chashme Badoor. (Look, all you have to do is make a film set in Delhi winters, half the battle is won already.)

Yet, this is a film with a very dark heart. In a lot of Imtiaz Ali’s films, the irony doesn’t come from unrequited love, but indecision. A character’s lack of self awareness in the exact moment that it will make all the difference. Put simply, the characters are in love with each other, but the love is asynchronous. In the moment that he loves her, she is indecisive. And vice versa.

Never mind the shifts in reality, an India where musicians have a massive following, and an existence independent of playback singing. All that is irrelevant, I don’t go to the cinema for realism. I go to the cinema for an amplified experience of a stray emotion in real life. The details help me identify with that emotion. So for all I care, Ranbir Kapoor a.k.a Janardhan a.k.a Jordan could have been a famous film star and not a rockstar.

THis is a film about Ranbir Kapoor’s character, Jordan. In the rare moments when Heer (Nargis’s character) shines, it’s because of her interaction with Jordan. She is ‘pretty’, in the way a lot of girls are pretty when they are in their early 20s, in fact, in some scenes she looks absolutely divine. But in the end she is the vanilla-flavoured girl, who wants a little bit of the risqué before she gets married, but is probably too afraid to do anything that really challenges the way the world operates. She is a passive actor in her own life. She is brought to life (and indeed to death) by her love for Jordan. She is the backdrop. (Made more obvious by how you never quite go inside her head – what does she really feel towards her husband? What is eating away her soul?)

In the beginning, Jordan talks about how he has no problems in life – everybody loves him, there’s no reason to be angsty. But actually, he’s never really a happy man who feels like he’s found his corner in the world. You realise later, that perhaps his family doesn’t really care for him, nobody understands his music, his friends don’t really seem to stand by him. He is lonely, spontaneous and impulsive.

I thought perhaps the departure for Imtiaz Ali was how the name of this film focuses on one person, rather than the overwhelming emotion in a relationship. (Jab We Met, Love Aaj Kal etc.). But perhaps the real departure is the idea that the heartbreak is not caused by a ‘misunderstanding’ or ‘circumstances’. Sometimes, heartbreak is imminent, and will come because intensity is what Jordan has learned to thrive on. Jordan turns to Nargis to heal his own despair – but there’s no telling how happy he will be with that. It’s poignant because she’s on her deathbed. If she was attainable, he might well be bored.

The film meanders, and fails to hold itself together in the last 45 minutes. The plot device of skipping into different ‘eras’ is quite alright, but for a film that departs from the usual stuff, it then becomes formulaic. It’s a bit too long. And yet, I walked away feeling a knot of empathy, sadness and joy in my heart for the khanabadosh that Jordan is.

But I do recall this absurd incident. I was rather young, perhaps about 12, and found myself at a friend’s place who had regular bhajan mandali gatherings. While I was aware of some carnatic songs, when I was asked to sing a ‘tamil bhajan’ I just froze. On an average, I had already found that heavy carnatic numbers didn’t really suit a majority of North Indian tastes. Actually they didn’t even suit a majority of South Indian tastes.

So it was, more out of performance anxiety than any actual desire to be clever, I sang Roja Poo Aadi Vandandu (Agni Nakshatram). Amala (so cute!) and Prabhu (also so cute then!) prance about aerobically. I knew the words to the entire song because I’d helped my cousin decipher them and write them down in her big brown book that I’ve written about earlier.

I think AK’s parents felt that it wasn’t very bhajan like, but they sweetly smiled and let me finish, before giving me two laddoos. Well, for some people working out is like religion etc. (If you know me at all, you know that’s not true for me.)

PS: AK, I doubt if you read this blog, but if you do, apologies for ilayaraja-bombing your bhajan.

Also, have a lovely Pongal. Just eat a lot. Okay?

Aakash and Kiara need to get high quickly, so they are in search for a weed shop in Haryana. They meet Tau Lallan Laal, who has a weed farm in Haryana. He agrees to give them a lot of raw weed for a deal: Akash must marry Lallan’s daughter Lalli, and Kaira must marry his son, Pappan. Neither Akash, nor Kaira like this, so they say their goodbyes and start to leave, but Lallan Lal being the gunda he is, holds them up with his shotgun and threatens to kill them if they don’t marry his children. Akash and Kaira are trapped, so they think of a plan to escape, mainly involving disguising themselves as buffalos and hiding among Lallan’s huge herd of buffalos. They cannot find any buffalo skin for disguise, so they paint themselves black. Unfortunately Pappan finds out their plan and complains to his father. Lallan is now very angry and ties Kaira up in chains and forces Akash to dance endlessly, else he’ll shoot Kaira. Akash dances all day to the song: “Kajra Kajra Kjaraaaare” and “Ashiq Banaya Aapne”. Lalli enjoys this very much. One night Akash finds a shotgun lying around. He picks it up, kills Lallan, Lalli, Pappan and also Kaira. He runs away with all the weed and buffalos. The movie ends with Akash smoking the weed on top of a buffalo, with all other buffalos following him and dancing to the tune of “Anjana, a a a ah! Anjani i i i i”

To be honest, that sounds so much better than what the film is likely to be – yet another story set in firang-land about two cool people falling in love despite having different gastronomic preferences. (Okay, that’s harsh – but can anything beat the above storyline?)

For starters, never mind the parallels with the Ramayana. What Indian cinema storyline doesn’t involve some shadowy version of one of the epics? And the elements that are supposed to reflect the epic, are bloody obvious in the story. Right down to Surpanakha’s nose pinching. I just found myself wishing that this film was called Beera, or Jungle, or even something pointless like Jalwa. Because the need to keep beat to the epic actually held the film back. The dialogues became more laboured, attempting to drop hints. At every point, Mani wanted you to spot these ‘touches’, and say ‘See, see, it’s like the Ramayana’.

(Honestly, will Luv and Kush make an appearance in a sequel?)

Aishwariya is gorgeous. To anyone who groans about her ageing. Err.. Everyone does. Where on earth does it say that the heroine has to be fresh-faced and 19 years old? But she is so ethereal looking all the time, that you never see her dark side. You see her brave side, her confused side. But there is no darkness to her at all. Of all the characters dissected in the Ramayana – where different perspectives talk of Rama being not all that virtuous and Raavan’s virtues, here was a brilliant opportunity to understand Sita.

But at no point was Sita (or Ragini) ever actually torn. She doesn’t take sides. She’s so insignificant, she’s not even a pawn. She doesn’t really have a moral compass. She isn’t really tempted. Even her compassion is rehearsed.

On that note – if ever there was an interpretation of Sita that was brilliant and challenging, it’s Nina Paley’s Sitayana.

I have always loved Mani Ratnam’s films. I didn’t hate this one. I didn’t love it either. I was just bored. With every twist in Hanuman’s sagging tail becoming bloody obvious. The film didn’t move me, which is generally what I associate with Mani’s films. To be moved. To have something tug at your feelings.

Visual feast is maybe, but the film left my heart hungry. And what good is that?

Writing about the concert last evening is hard. I knew that this was not going to be a traditional filmy fare. But my expectations had gone up because I had been to a wonderful concert at the same venue in October last year that featured the City of Birmingham Orchestra and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. I can’t find any official videos anywhere – but a member of the audience filmed some.

The crowd connected instantly. Yes, there were moments when you felt that the very constructed approach the orchestra took actually stopped Rahat from improvising, but overall, it was a joyous concert. The second half really picked up.

Contrast this to the AR Rahman concert where most of the material was meant for a very different audience. The concert was sold to the desis by plastering AR Rahman’s name and stating that the orchestra would play some of his best-known numbers. Except most of the material felt alien and new. There was some from that Chinese film, the broadway show and a few other numbers. The familiar stuff was just a themes – Roja, Bombay, Swades and Taal. And the audience visibly perked up during those numbers.

It’s not to say that there isn’t any room for anything different, or that an Indian audience is incapable of digesting an orchestral performance. Far from it. But people bought tickets expecting more familiar tunes.

The unfamiliar tunes didn’t sound particularly fantastic either. Slightly pale in comparison to the rich harmonies of the usual Rahman fare. The choir did alright, but there was some woman who sang (and sounded like she was wailing) in a few pieces. Contrast this to some brilliant stuff Ilayaraja has done – like How to Name It, which uses an orchestra as well, but retains Ilayaraja’s signature style. Doesn’t alienate, and potentially draws an audience unused to orchestral music into its fold.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra does brilliant interpretations. For instance, this one is of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gffPKepztS8 Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd. But the interpretation yesterday felt watery. Two and a half hours into the concert I left. A big part of me felt like this was for the phantom elite firang to make Rahman more acceptable to the ‘Western World’ – or whatever that means.

More than just disappointed, I was bored. Which is just sad.

One of the films I managed to catch was Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya. I’ll be honest, when I walked out of the theatre, I was tired, a bit annoyed and just wanted to go home and sleep. Some of it has to do with the fact that the film started at about 10 45 PM, and by the time it ended I wanted to curl up in the nearest cosy corner and sleep forever.

But thinking about it now, it was a beautiful film in parts. It’s lyrical, soft, with genuinely funny moments. The story is jagged, with no smooth edges – but you don’t mind that – in fact, the film makes sense only because it never quite feels like a love story. There are barely any characters in the film other than the two main people, but they are so well etched that it doesn’t matter.

Suffice to say – it’s the story of a torrid relationship between a man (Simbu) and a woman (Trisha). Funnily enough, Trisha’s character works well because it is seen only through Simbu’s eyes. That is, there are no scenes when he’s not present, or does not have some way of knowing what happened. It’s a more mature way of dealing with multiple narratives, making it obvious that this is only one person’s view of the relationship.

You see Trisha (who is perhaps the individual who brings in confusion into the relationship) as a person who has her reasons for doing things, even if the reasons are not made apparent. She doesn’t feel like a black and white character, you feel a certain ambiguous empathy for her. Simbu on the other hand – may have finally learned not to overact in every scene. He’s fleetingly naive, optimistic but easily heartbroken.

By the way, isn’t it delightful when the heroine in a Tamil film isn’t a goddamn college student of some sort?

The last forty five minutes of the film drag on rather endlessly. It gets interesting for thirty seconds, but by then the dialogues are so long, you just want them to shut up. I don’t have an issue with films that move forward largely through dialogue, but unless they are well written, and don’t become monologues it doesn’t hold my interest.

Despite that though, it’s a lovely film with fantastic music. One of the best numbers is Aaromale.

PS – On that note, while there’s the whole film within a film angle, not much is made of it, and it’s not really used till the very end of the film.