Starring Dhanush, Sonam Kapoor, Abhay Deol, Swara Bhaskara, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub
Directed by Aanand L. Rai
Rating: * * * *
This enormously-enriching film about the pain of love has four heroes:
Dhanush, Sonam Kapoor, A R Rahman's music and the city of Varanasi. Not
necessarily in that order. But then 'orderly conduct' is hardly a given
in a film about raging unrequited love.
He loves her to death. Cross his heart and hope to die. And it's their
wedding day. But they're not getting married to one another. As he
returns exhausted from messing up her marriage to another man, the
slumbering band-baaja wallahs at his own wedding hasten awake and begin
playing a wedding song wearily.
It's a brilliant defiant moment defining the contradictions and savage ironies of romantic associations.
Raanjhanaa tells us, it is not so cool to fall in love. Unless you're
ready to slither on the ground for love, if the need arises.
Ever wondered why we FALL and not rise in love? Just looking at Aanand
Rai's unforgettable dazzling and non-derivative take on unrequited love
set amidst the bustling river-bank politics of Varanasi, we know all
over again that love can kill your spirit, soul, selfesteem and finally
your physical presence as well.
Towards the end when the film's obsessive Majnu has lost everything,
there is one of the many powerfully-written scenes where the
very-talented Swara Bhaskara playing a loud aggressively besotted
suitor-in-waiting tells her on-screen Soutan, `That isn't my man dying
inside. My man would never be spitting blood. `
Angry, aggressive, passionate, temperamental, moody and quite simply
majestic Raanjhanaa is an opulent epic seductive raging and rippling ode
to love. The script (written by Himanshu Sharma) journeys from the
lover-boy Kundan's childhood when he first sees his object of adoration
doing her namaaz, and follows him to adulthood, much in the same way as
he follows Zoya around with.
In seductive spirals of song-filled rhapsody we see Kundan pursuing his
lady-love through the robust gallis and mohallahs of Varanasi.
It's a beautifully charted journey, much less foul-mouthed and
belligerent than Habib Faisal's Ishaqzaade and far more mature and
relevant than Ayan Mukerjee's Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, and made vastly
enjoyable by the director's confident and unhurried control over his
lover's uncontrollable passion. It's as though Rai knows that the heart
is more prone to betrayal than redemption.
The film celebrates the pain of heartbrokenness. She slaps him? That's
fine. He loves her all the more for it. She turns his proposal down?
That's okay. He'll do it again. . . and. . . again. It's the
protagonist's single-mindedness that navigates this enchanting love
story through a series of circumstances that make Kundan look as brazen
as they make destiny look cruel.
Throughout Kundan's self-destructive odyssey into the heart's darkest
regions we are made privy into his agony and ecstacy. We know exactly
how his heart beats. Maybe partly because it beats to the sound of A R
Rahman's evocative songs.
We see Zoya just the way Kundan does:
tall, creamy-complexioned, warm, seductive and unattainable. Dhanush as
the worshipping lover-boy lets his face become the map of his heart.
So
transparent are his feelings for the girl that every kind word or
gesture from her brings a response of teary gratitude in his eyes.
This is not love as we see it in today's day and age. It is the kind of
adoration that Radha had for Krishna. In many ways Raanjhanaa is a
gender-reversed take on the Radha-Krishna myth that takes the adoring
heroine-worshipping Varanasi boy through some exceptional unacceptable
circumstances.
Towards the second movement of his extraordinarily well-crafted
screenplay Aanand Rai takes Kundan's destiny to the Delhi University
campus.
Bringing campus politics into a film about compulsive
love may not seem like the easiest of marriages to implement. It is to
Rai's credit that he doesn't lose hold of his characters' collective and
individual destiny even while moving out of their home turf.
The characters dither, stray, falter and lose focus. The narrative
never does. Rai's storytelling remains remarkable steady and pure. His
affection for his characters doesn't colour his view of a
rapidly-changing world where love and politics make bizarre but
compatible bed-fellows.
To read the film's political overtures
as an intrusion into the central romance is to interpret the life of
love as being mono-chromatic. Aanand Rai's film embraces all the
experiences, pain, anguish, sacrifice and selfishness of love. There is
scarcely a single false note in this love liaison.
Hats off to Rai's actors for getting it right. Every performer including
a bit-player like Rahul Shankliya whom the forlorn hero encounters at
the river ghat, seems to have come into the picture knowing not only his
or her own lines but everyone else's as well.
There is an air
of unrehearsed preparedness in the way the actors pitch their
characters. Dhanush's performance would go down in cinematic history as
one of the most consistent and compelling portrayals of single-minded
ardour.
As for Sonam Kapoor, she is a complete revelation! In a born-again
performance she sparkles and shines creating a kind of sunshine-girl who
is so taken up with herself that she doesn't get the chance to see what
affect she has on the other until it's too late.
Specially in
the last half-hour when she must play out the murky game of politics
Sonam comes to grips with the very complex emotions of her character and
carries the role to a very dignified and fulfilling closure.
Swara Bhaskara as Dhanush's devoted ill-treated girl-pal and Mohammed
Zeeshan Ayyub as his loyal friend, once again prove themselves
natural-born scenestealers.
Raanjhanaa is a very simply-told story of a love so intense durable and
destructive that it hurts. The inner turbulence, tumult and tensions of
the central alliance evolves from the vibrancy of Varanasi, from each
fluent note of Rahman's music, and from every pore of director Aanand
Rai's transparent honest passionate treatment of that much-misunderstood
emotion called love.
As I look back on this deeply-satisfying film I search for flaws. And I
come up with one. Would anyone every want to fall in love with a girl
so selfish she allows the man who worships her to be destroyed right in
front of her eyes? Is love, then, only about giving and not expecting
anything in return?
If Rai's remarkable love tale seems so richly sublime and vibrant it's
partly because Sonam and Dhanush have submerged themselves into their
characters until we see only their love. . . rather, his love.
