Movie Reviews

Mausam

Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Supriya Pathak, Anupam Kher and Aditi Sharma

Writer-Director: Pankaj Kapoor

Rating: ****

There is an absolutely devastating moment of pure drama in this eagerly-awaited romance where Shahid Kapoor espies from a train the lost love of his life, Sonam Kapoor, standing forlorn in the snow with luggage waiting for god knows what! The next train? Love? Death? Or the next life?

It's a moment that defines "Mausam", a film that has some serious flaws, but finally holds together as a work of renaissance art, more remarkable, in parts outstanding, for what it attempts rather than what it finally achieves. 

Pankaj Kapoor takes the Muslim-Hindu love story between a Kashmiri refugee girl and a Punjabi boy through an arching sweep of history. Every historical trauma that has defined and defiled India and Indians in the last 30 years props up as a vital image to underline the love story.

And what "Mausam" finally says is, love becomes impossible in a civilization that chooses to define itself by violence rather than peace. Gandhi? He could be just a spectre that never existed in a world where two young people cannot come together in a clasp of love for the fear of falling into a terror trap. 

We have award-worthy performances in "Mausam" by the hero who happens to be the director's son. But that is just a karmic coincidence, like much of what transpires between the lovers in "Mausam".

The film goes from one phase in the couple's life to another, not quite smoothly but not strenuously either.

The transitions in their estrangement are mapped out in some finely-written scenes where the couple's smothered affections for one another are manifested in moments of sublime beauty.

The ever-brilliant cinematographer Binod Pradhan captures the couple against breathtaking backdrops in rural Punjab and Scotland.

"Mausam" is one of the best-looking films in recent times. The transitions in time and topography are brought about with a fair degree of inner conviction and outer resplendence. 

The synthesis of the lovers' inner and outer world is not always stress-free. The couple's inability to come together through various tragic and traumatic historical conflicts is depicted in scenes that range from the rivetting to the mundane. 

Visually the film is a feast.

The film's strong sense of purpose and its love-defining affiliation to socio-cultural incidents leave little space for the incidental characters (of whom there are many) to grow in the plot.

That, in a way, is the need of the plot. But you do crave to see more of the lives around the couple and how these lives and the relationships qualify the love story at the film's centre. You want to see the long-lasting friendship between Aayaat's Muslim father (Kamalnain Chopra) and the Kashmir Pundit (Anupam Kher). 

And there is a plenty of quality of that sublime stillness in the storytelling - the film's extraneous correctness hides much of the film's intrinsic inconsistencies. Then there is Shahid, standing tall with a performance that puts him right up there among the finest contemporary actors.

Shahid takes us through the film's and his character's romantic odyssey, inconsistencies and all. Forget Tom Cruise. In the Airforce uniform he reminds us of Rajesh Khanna in "Aradhana". And that's the highest compliment any contemporary star can be paid.

The director tries hard to merge Sonam in the resplendent ambience. Her performance has enchanting echoes of Kareena Kapoor in "Refugee". The camera gives her no room to complain. But in the intensely romantic moments, she looks lost rather than lovelorn.

It's the other girl, the spirited Punjabi kudi Rajjo, in Shahid's life played by Aditi Sharma, who fills up the small space provided to her character. 

"Mausam" is about the thwarted love between Harry and Aayaat. When they finally meet during the Gujarat riots, they seem to discover not love but its aftermath, which is a far greater thing than love.

Where the film seems to lag behind is in creating emotional pockets for the couple's mutual feelings to develop.

Shahid playing Harry the Punjabi wastrel turned air-force officer and Sonam playing Aayaat the refugee from Kashmir, have several shared tender moments.

And yes, Pritam's music is apt. But the best tunes "Abhi na jao chod kar" and "Ajeeb dastaan hain yeh", are not his.

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Mere Brother Ki Dulhan

By Subhash K Jha

Starring Imran Khan, Ali Zafar and Katrina Kaif

Written & Directed by Ali Abbas Zafar

Rating: ***

Somewhere in the vast spaces of mainstream Hindi cinema, the North Indian shaadi with its band baaja and, yes, baarati, seems to have made a permanent place in our cinema. Mere Brother Ki Dulhan(MBKD) is the third film in the last 8 months after the delightful Band Baaja Baarati and the surprising Tanu Weds Manu to weave a rom-com around the sights sounds scents stress chaos and satire of a big fat Hindu wedding.

Must say, the other two films got it right dead-on. MBKD flounders in its frisky fusion of a love triangle and plea for an arranged marriage. Debutant director Ali Abbas Zafar knows the subtexts in his script well enough to conceal the rather glaring discrepancies in the storytelling.

The narration quite frequently relies on jump cuts, retro music and other external ploys to make the goings-on appear more involving than they really are. The recurrent use of R D Burman’s Piya Tu Ab To Aaja has no relevance after a point. It just becomes a tiresome inclusion.

The three main characters, played by three watchable stars one of them from across the border, manage to take the plot’s improbabilities into the province of the palatable. But the situational humour doesn’t quite have the delightfully disarming naturalness of Band Baaja Baraat.


                                        
But the characters exude a contagious warmth, more in their individual capacity than in combinations. For a film about love warmth togetherness and family bonding during the time of a wedding, the interative warmth between characters is strangely missing. Besides one memorable sequence towards the beginning in front of the Taj Mahal(a recurring cultural and sociological symbol in the film) when they share cold chai, there is little to suggest any serious bonding between Katrina Kaif and Imran Khan…or for that matter, between the two brothers played by Ali Zafar and Imran Khan.

Zafar who delighted in the satirical mode of Tere Bin Laden, returns with yet another performance that knows how over-the-top to go without toppling over. Yup, Zafar gets it pitch-perfect all the way. The same cannot be said of the film which occasionally slips into becoming a stretch.

What really redeems the film’s blind spots is Katrina Kaif who brings a very spcial transparency and dazzle to her role of a wild child who wants to have all the fun that she can before she settles into a comfortably arranged marriage with the rakish NRI Ali Zafar.

Fun, as it turns out, leading to falling in love with her brother-in-law-to-be. The turn of events may surprise the characters. We remain largely detached from the synthesis of celebration and drama.

“What will I tell everyone? That I fell in love with my Bhabhi?” the embarrassed and horrified brother-in-law tells his untamable Babhi-to-be.

That’s Imran Khan, playing the sweet-tempered benign do-gooder once again. Khan stays in his comfort zone while Katrina comes out of it to give herself and the audience the time of her life.




There is nothing seriously amiss in MBKD. It gets right the camerawork (Sudeep Chatterjee), music (Sohail Sen) and the outdoor locations in and around Delhi. What it misses out on is that element of unpredictability during the time of a wedding that Band Baaja Baarat and Tanu Weds Manu managed to capture probably because the couple at the helm was supported by any number of splendid supporting stars. Here the supporting actors are serviceable. Parikshat Sahnni and Kanwaljeet as the couple’s fathers try to be coic and filmy. They just looke jaded.

By the time the Brother walks away with the Dulhan we really have nothing we would like to say to them, except, what took them so long?