Today a
‘good movie’ has become a very subjective statement; a movie’s success could be
measured through various factors, not necessarily cinematographic: commercial
success; critics’ ratings; viewers’ ratings; and if everything fails, the
scandals that it has managed to garner pre or/and post release. Simply put,
it’s difficult to find a good movie that’s deprived of all those above
etiquettes and still fall in the purview of entertainment and art. These two
options might not even gel in the contemporary cinema even though late 90’s
have seen such good attempts in the form of Satya,
Roja and even to a certain extent Rangeela, not in this chronological
order though. The late 2000 came with many experimental attempts too as the
rise of multiplex culture ensured a window to these experimental non-formula
movies, Dev D and Gangs of Wasseypur for instance.
Raanjhanaa
by Anand Rai claims the attention from viewers on various grounds: it’s a
romantic movie (off late there has not been many good ones), and the plot
advances like a story in a novel, well detailed; technically correct and yet chimerical.
And to complete the picture, the ‘hero’, unlike Hritik Roshan and Shah Rukh
Khan, resembles many of us blog writers. It’s on that point perhaps that
resides the strength of a ‘real’ love story as in many reel stories the lovers
are straight from the encyclopaedic images of Greek gods. Lest the protagonist,
Kundan (played marvellously by Dhanush) forgets this reality, his man-Friday
Murari (played by Md. Zeshaan Ayub), reminds him of this reality: “Ab Shah Rukh
Khan to tum ho nahi…” As a viewer, your sincerely is smug: “thank God it’s not
SRK”, especially with the kind of movies the latter is churning out recently.
With Kundan, Murai
and Zoya (Sonam Kapoor as good as she can get), the plot begins in the by lanes
of Varanasi; an imperfect love story in real jargons with the differences of
class and religion. In a traditional Bollywood potboiler, it might have ended
up differently: everyone opposing to such a union (in the climax scene) getting
a pedagogical taste of maintaining “religious harmony” or even love being pure
“above all the notion of class and religion”. Raanjhanaa however differs
on that point; it breaks the myth of a romanticised love and enters into the
realm of unpretentious straightforwardness. The director uses the symbolism
“pyar ek bachpana” (the concept of juvenile love) in its literal sense: when
our love birds decide to break social barriers, they are both school going
adolescents. Later, the lady ‘improves’ to shun it as kindergarten infatuation.
However, the black sheep incarnated by Kundan never ceases to get ‘real’ about it,
he is a Believer.
There are many turning points in the plot, mainly the
discoveries made by Kundan in relation to his lover-to-be in love with someone
else and the role played by religious identities intermittently throughout his
life. As the lead character, the religious barriers do not seem to bother him,
as a matter of fact; they do not exist for him. He only discovers the ephemeral
nature of his bliss when he realizes that Zoya is in love with someone born in
the same variety of cradle. Yet, it doesn’t destroy him; a fact owing to his
infallible affection towards Zoya. It’s only latter that he would discover the
transcending power of his own love; the truism that has been passed through
generations by intellectuals to poets.
There are certain impressive moments; in a scene when
Murari tells Kundan that “all object of desires has been taken away from these
rural guys by engineers and doctors residing in cities”. This realism could be
the subject of sociological study of an India marked by its difference between
what Urban is and what is not. The character of Murari impressively makes
forays into the domain of realism, something that the gullible mind of Kundan
fears to tread. The latter’s poetry won’t ‘contaminate’ the former’s crass
reality. The only moment he is seen to be overwhelmed with sentiments is
towards the end when Kundan is admitted in a hospital. It speaks a lot about a
rational mind that has got no refuge from hardship as opposed to a romantic spirit
that doesn’t know it.
The protagonist’s entry into JNU (Sic.), an
epitome of liberalism, doesn’t change his approach much. He won’t become a Che
Guevara overnight, yet he gets himself involved into issues, incomprehensible
to him, just for the sake of proximity to Zoya. The physical and psychological
distance that he has travelled for his object of affection would guide him in
his pursuit. There is a certain element of postmodernism to his character;
certain recklessness towards life, an unassuming nonchalance towards his
actions. In the 70’s cinema this would have been the characteristic of a Dandy,
in the 21st century it’s an odd-jobber, no cigarettes or cigar in
hand, no taste for art and music, he is the representative of 70% of Indian
male, today’s ground reality. It was also a necessity for JNU to be the central
point of Kundan’s quest as it is one of the very rare locations in India where
he would ever get a due: no matter what his fantasies are, there is always an
underlining connotation of class attached to his struggle against odds, JNU
would help him get rid of that baggage. A geographical location, in its semiotic
sense, transcends into warfare for this classless village guy. It’s at this
same location that he discovers his Zoya as a free being, beyond any family
shackles, in her own element and he realizes that it won’t be, if it is at all,
the same juvenile love encore that he had few years back in Varanasi.
Since the realist cinema is more about finding a theme as
opposed to its commercial counterpart, there needs to be one in this movie.
This time it’s unadulterated and unconditioned love. A notion on which the
Indian cinema relied heavily in 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, later, however, it started
manifesting itself as more pragmatic and convincing. Raanjhanaa flirts with realism and fiction. It might not be very
credible on many issues but it certainly manages to keep certain volatile
issues, like religion and ‘faith’, in the backburners rather deservingly.
Kundan’s love wages its own battle again refusal (by Zoya), it ignores
radically the aspects to which a rational mind would concede defeat.
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