Monday, November 30, 2015
Tamasha
Revolving Stage
Ever since 3 Idiots has put the do-your-own-thing ‘keeda’ into people’s heads, film heroes and heroines now want to escape the rat race, explore their inner selves and follow their dreams.
Ved Sahni (Ranbir Kapoor) of Imtiaz Ali’s Tamasha wants to give up being a product manager and do plays, because as a child he was fascinated by a scruffy story-teller who fired his imagination. For this he goes through more soul-searching than is good for him (or us). As an aside, Ali could perhaps be informed that many people who do theatre, at least in Mumbai, have day jobs!
Ved and Tara (Deepika Padukone) have a meet-cute in Corsica where they decide not to share any details, not even names. They are too old to be doing the gap year—she is there because of her love for Asterix comics (really?), why he is there, is not clear. But he becomes ‘Don’ and she ‘Mona’ with an all fun but no touch arrangement. Corsica is beautiful, there is a fair amount of ‘matargashti’ before she goes home. And though she pines for him, for four years, she makes no effort to find him—and she could if she had some sense.
When they do meet up again and start dating, she sees that he is a marketing drudge, not the “animal” he was in Corsica. Why Ali thinks that a marketing person cannot also be fun-loving and adventurous is baffling. Anyway, so both do some weeping and wailing—he acts as if seeking independence is the same as behaving badly with everyone and then running home to Daddy (with his Partition hang-ups) to seek his approval to become a theatrewalla.
The just out of adolescence guy in Wake Up Sid (also played by Ranbir Kapoor) had more spunk that this befuddled wimp. Why Hindi cinema cannot understand the concept of growing up, falling out of love and realizing that the world doesn’t offer happiness on a platter, has something to do with current Bollywood’s immaturity. This could have been in the league of Before Sunrise, but it remains a partially enjoyable, partially tedious film with Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone scorching the screen with their talent—both actors at the top of their game and deserving of much better films.
Labels: Cinemaah
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