PIYUSH ROY
Harry and Sejal are perhaps Ali’s first attempt at creating two equally voluble characters in the conversational course of a single film
After the air, water, shelter or the roti, kapda, makaan… type of survival necessities of the human life is met, ever wondered about the most sustaining attraction to our existence on the earth?
‘Conversations’, indeed, it has to be.
Think about it. It could be conversations with members of one’s immediate family, colleagues at work, neighbours, inspiring minds or teachers at college or the school of life, travellers on similar journeys, even god, and of course friends. But we all need to talk, be listened to, and feel the feeling of being heard. Intense loneliness makes us veer towards seeking that babble within, a state of self-communication, often mistaken as a first step to madness. In today’s busy age of decreasing actual conversations in person, that latent, basic urge to be heard or talked to is satisfied through Twitter feeds, Facebook notes, trolls, WhatsApp forwards, ‘special day’ greetings, selfie shares, unleashing many an unwanted talkathon on multiple social media.
Check out, for instance the humongous discussion generated by the latest Imtiaz Ali film, Jab Harry Met Sejal. The mandatory 20-30 media reviews aside; because it is a Shah Rukh Khan film, there has been a deluge of fan and audience comments with every take being followed by multiple retakes. Moreover, since the film is not an unqualified success, critically or commercially, most of those reviews have turned into endless opinion debates, sans little constructive effort towards anyarguable, negotiated conclusion.
As the need to talk increasingly morphs into a habit of love for one’s own voice, nuance becomes a collateral casualty as conversations turn into noise of the loudest, until banished into a temporary panacea of forced silence.
Imtiaz Ali, is perhaps that lone Hindi cinema maker, whose auteur edge lies in a consistent exploring of new facets within that oldest art of conversation. His protagonists may be loud like Kareena Kapoor’s Geet in Jab We Met and Anushka Sharma’s Sejal, or the ‘silent, observant’ types like Ranbir Kapoor in Rockstar, Deeppika Padukone in Tamasha or Randeep Hooda in Highway. They however, are always on integral opposite ends of some meaningful dialogues on life and things in between. One doesn’t have to even talk always to get heard. The male protagonists of Jab We Met, Rockstar or Highway convey volumes through the silence of their evocative gaze.
Harry and Sejal are perhaps Ali’s first attempt at attempting two equally voluble characters in the conversational course of a single film. That’s a definite leap in the pushing of his story telling abilities. So, one cannot really blame him to have stopped growing within a repeating formula. A director becomes an auteur in the consistent articulation of new possibilities within a singular world view that he/she or his/her body of work has been consistent with, irrespective of the box-office fate of his take on art. Ali’s career has experienced waves of dizzy success (Jab We Met), moderate acclaim (Rockstar) and commercial nadir (Tamasha). Box-office performance should be the last criteria to push or plummet any debate on the mettle of an auteur.
His choice of stars, Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma, for a high on conversations, twin talkers’ film, cannot be doubted. Though given the romantic culmination of their interactions, it would have looked more convincing if Anushka was doing that talking with Ranbir Kapoor or Ranveer Singh, and Shah Rukh with Kajol or Juhi Chawla. What the actors do falter at, on the writing rather than the performing end, is in the almost puerile twang that drives their talking. No window to the soul, the unspoken or the insecurities shaping their outward garrulousness is revealed or explored. Neither do they grow as individuals between the first and the last frames of the film. Yes, they find a voice through their journey and end up singing together in the end, loud and long, literally. But as a character in the film says, “Isn’t that a bit silly”, when you have two very competent dramatic star actors at your disposal.
Was the director too awed by the presence of a star larger than him to let the latter’s better judgement prevail over some of his sure-fire experimental takes? Filmmaking is a collaborative job and when a venture is toplined by a superstar of reckon few notches above its director’s mettle, one never knows who prevailed and by how much was the original vision compromised in the look-out for that perfect take. The fact that the film has been generating such passionate debates in the social media indicates that both the director and his star remain extremely relevant, of interest and worthy of engagement to their fans and viewers irrespective of thelimited merits of their immediate collaboration. Such reputations are not made overnight. One or two films cannot eclipse their filmography either. The big regret of the film’s genuine critics, too, is more about that missed-out opportunity to make a memorable tribute to on-screen conversations.
Given our long, robust and thriving narrative traditions of oral transmission, Indian cinema remains one of those few world cinemas that still pride over their ability to deliver good dialogues. We have a special category mention for ‘dialogue writers’ in our films’ credits, unlike Hollywood, where that expertise is ideally subsumed within writing or screenplay credits. We love to be party to a good chat and enjoy a healthy serving of daily gossip. When Harry met Sejal, their chat could have been another memorable on-screen conversation riot, like when Geet met Aditya (Shahid Kapoor’s character) in Jab We Met. The extreme in the articulated disappointments against Ali’s latest film is also the outcome of a melt-down of that exalted expectation. The other being, Bollywood’s King of Romance failing to give us at least one ‘Aha!’ moment of love – an integral aspect of all his films (remember Mahira Khan’s introduction scene in an all-out action film like Raees?) – in his latest rom-com on the road. Yes, there is more to SRK than just being SRK, but even a few good ‘Being SRK’ moments can uplift an average film to cult status, at leastfor his diehard fans. Ali only grudgingly explores that possibility in a lone ‘walk-the-girl-through-a-first-wooing-act’ moment between Harry and Sejal in Prague.
The Imtiaz Ali-Shah Rukh Khan combo deserves a definite go at take two. How about a mature love story, few years down the line, with some truly insightful conversations and reflections welcoming King Khan to the other side of 60…?