Director : Imtiaz Ali
Starring : Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Piyush Mishra, Jawed Sheikh, Vivek Mushran
Many people are alive, but don't touch the miracle of being alive
Thich Nhat Hanh
Main Don hoon… aur tum..
Main.. Mona
Darling…
The thought
of being able to be anyone in the world, and break away from your own mundane
life…
The thought
of throwing caution to the air, reject all the conformity you have been
closed in, like a creeper being minded with a stick, deciding which direction
it should take.. if given the freedom, may bloom in all directions, wherever it
finds space to grow…
Finding that
one person who sees the real you… who sees the extraordinary in the ordinary you...
We keep
lying to ourselves, giving consolation prizes in form of material acquisitions…
survive in the race. But that isn’t living, that is not what life is.
Imtiaz talks
about this and more in Tamasha. And I could relate to all of it…
The story of
Ved and Tara, becomes the backdrop as you may find yourself looking to the film to
give answers… and in the end you might realize, you already knew the answer… but like
so many of us.. found it much more convenient to avoid looking on the inside,
and face the truth.. that yes, mediocrity stems from conforming, and happiness
is a state of mind.. and not a job.
Two
strangers, a chance meeting in the fairy tale beautiful Corsica. The boy tells
the girl, let me not introduce my real self, that is boring… and why should I,
when here… I can be anyone I want to… The game intrigues the girl and she
agrees too… We see two people, who have their own reasons to find happiness in
an alternate reality, escape… but after a few days of living in a bubble,
reality knocks and the girl goes back to India… not before breaking their own
wow to not “cross the line”.
They had promised
each other they would never meet again in “real” life. But the girl has already
fallen in love with the boy.
Four years
pass as Heer Toh Badi Sad hai plays… And they meet again.. not by chance, but
by the girl’s design.. and the Don of her dreams turns out to be an ordinary
guy, he is no Don, he is sweet… boring.. a creature of routine. She tries hard to scrape off the layers that hide the man she fell in love with...
And what
follows is a journey of Ved… desperately seeking Don…
Imtiaz has
woven a complex film in Tamasha.
For example the
childhood flashes of Ved… where he is the happiest when listening to stories
told by an old grandpa figure, who charges for his tales, often mixing them up..
and the director underlines how all love stories are the same… but also
questions do they need to be? The story within the story, shown
with some inspired mise en scène,
where Ram wears a sweater as he leaves to hunt for the deer…and Sanyukta walks
through the church aisle…
The imagery is beautiful, yet it
is a child’s imagination, replete with impossibles… as dreams mostly are.. but
for young ved they are real.. more real and relatable than the expectations of
his father, son of a partition family… who feels financial security is
paramount, as they had lost everything when they left Pakistan.
I also loved
the use of the chapters with individual titles format, consistent with “we all
have a story to tell” motif.
From what
can be simply taken as a film about the self-actualization of the protagonist
Ved, Tamasha to me was much more than that. It brings forth the angst which lot
of my friends caught in the 9-5 culture discuss, who would rather be trekking
the Himalayas or going for a bike ride to Goa, but don’t. We can… that is the
message of Tamasha. In 3 Idiots the Engineering vs Dreams has been tackled, yes…
But I like the way Imtiaz has created Ved.
If I have
any grouse with the film is that I wish I knew Tara better. But she to me is
just the catalyst… And within that role, she comes out as a strong woman, yet weak when it comes to what her heart wants. She can walk out on the man who she finds to be a shadow of the person she was in love, yet come back and accept she can not be without him...
As the film delves deeper into the psyche of Ved, you feel his pain, and root for him to break free of his shackles, man up even..
There is a Ranbir
monologue in the climax of the film, that
stirred me so much…and reminded me of the quote… "We don’t stop playing
because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing"
The froth of Corsica, the golden hues, the crystal waters of the Mediterranean make you relax and feel you are free as a bird, on an adventure, and is a perfect foil for what follows, I could see why Imtiaz has deliberately kept the pace slow, nothing much happening... giving you time to actually unwind.. before the drabness of mundane life hits the characters and you...
The tie
wearing, routine bound Ved who is a volcano at the edge of eruption, when
stoked gently by Tara, he truly loses it… and though at times the anger may
seem sudden, if you are with Ved’s psyche, it is understandable.
As Melvin
said in As Good As It Gets, “You want me to be a better man”, in Tara Ved finds
someone who finally pushes him to break out of his shackles.
Heartbreak
leading to achieving your true potential is something Imitiaz has used in his
earlier films too.. Rockstar, JWM. Here he also uses a Rickshaw driver… whose
story touches a chord in Ved, and he makes a big decision in his life.
Coming to
the crackling pair of Ranbir and Deepika, they both left me dazzled with their
performances. Ranbir is truly one of the best actors of his time. He is almost
flawless as he creates two distinct people.. Don in Corsica and the Product
Manager Ved. Deepika.. aah.. a diamond that keeps shining brighter as each
performance unfolds. Their chemistry fires the screen, it is a must watch just
to see these two share screen space.
The film is
filled with memorable moments between Ved and Tara… and some really funny lines…
The scene between Ranbir and Vivek Mushran really stood out.
The
cinematography by S. Ravi Varman is top notch, wouldn't have expected anything less. The music is not the best of Imti-ARR-Kamil
combo. But Heer and Agar Tum Sath ho really worked for me.
Imtiaz Ali
yet again proves he is one of the strongest individualistic voices of Hindi
cinema. Take a bow.
GO WATCH!!
My Verdict : 3.5/5
