Yuva (2004)

युवा

Mani Ratnam's Yuva ("Youth") might have set out to be a gritty, empowering call to arms, or a tribute to the power of young people to perturb the status quo.   Unfortunately, the film misses the mark in several respects, and ends up a dissatisfying jumble of half-wrought themes. 

As the film opens, the lives of three young men intersect on Calcutta's Hooghly Bridge.  Michael (Ajay Devgan) has just given a motorbike ride to Arjun (Vivek Oberoi), who is apparently chasing a girl.  Lallan (Abhishek Bachchan), in a small car, pulls up alongside Michael and pumps three bullets into him.  Arjun watches in horror as Michael skids out and flies over the guard rail into the river below.

In three separate flashback sequences, Yuva shows us how each of the three reached that pivotal point on the bridge.  Lallan is an impetuous, violent small-time thug.  His young wife, Sashi (Rani Mukherjee), naively demands that he give up his life of crime, but instead he gets pulled into bigger schemes, working as a heavy and hired assassin for the corrupt politician Bhatacharya (Om Puri).  Michael is a college student with a bright future, who throws away a prestigious physics scholarship in favor of political leadership; he is the charismatic head of a group of student activists attempting to win seats in the local government in opposition to Bhatacharya's machine.  Arjun is a carefree playboy, angling for a visa to America and chasing girls, especially Mira (Kareena Kapoor), whom he meets at a nightclub.  Arjun has little interest in anything else until that fateful afternoon when his path crosses Michael's and Lallan's.

This is a promising enough set-up, but ultimately Yuva is too cursory and totemic to be genuinely engaging.  Bhatacharya is sinister and thuggish, but we are never really shown what that does to the daily lives of either the students or the villagers that Michael mobilizes, leaving Michael's crusade abstract and unmotivated.  Michael himself is dreadfully dull; he is the smartest, the strongest, the most unwavering in his commitment, the most charismatic - he is a superman, the kind of character who can survive three point-blank gunshots and a tumble off a bridge and still emerge fearless and without a shred of doubt.  Michael's arc lacked any movement at all; he starts out perfect, and ends up perfect as well.  The fact that Ajay Devgan is too old for the role only contributes to the problem - he is too polished, to adult and too confident; a younger actor might have been able to present Michael's unwavering perfection as something more like a protective facade of youthful cockiness masking real insecurity, but Devgan just plays it straight.  Then, on the flip side from Michael is the unredeemable Lallan; Yuva attempts to give his story some shape, but he's just such a horrible sociopath that it's difficult to develop any sympathy for him.  Still, the downward spiral of Lallan and Sashi's marriage offers the film's most engaging and human, if painful and depressing, sequences.

Perhaps the most irritating weakness in Yuva is that there is no meaningful place for young women in the revolution it portrays.  If this isn't already apparent from the roles of the three love interests in the story, it is made absurdly clear in the title song, whose picturization portrays Michael marching determinedly at the head of a column of hundreds of his followers - and, apart from Michael's girlfriend loyally at his side, there is hardly a female face in sight.  Throughout the film the arcs of the three women are unsatisfyingly secondary to the stories of the men.  Even Sashi, the most developed of the three, is helpless; when it comes to the course of Lallan's unredeemable life, she may as well not exist, as she exerts no influence whatsoever.  Michael's girlfriend Radhika (Esha Deol) apparently has some part to play in Michael's plan, but the film doesn't really expound on it, instead giving us little more than her fawning devotion to the flawless superman.  Mira is even more marginal; she finally admits her attraction to Arjun once he demonstrates commitment to a meaningful cause, but she herself does not participate in it.  The future, apparently, is for the boys to shape, and for the girls to reject or admire.

Perhaps Yuva's shortcomings are all attributable to a single underlying weakness - the film cannot decide whether to deliver its message in a gritty, realistic package or in one adorned with mainstream Bollywood frills.  The film draws on a number of standard Bollywood tropes - the indestructible super-hero, the heroic struggle for a cause that is vaguely specified at best, the unredeemable villains, and even a laughably dishoom-dishoom climactic hand-to-hand fight scene.  But it mixes these with stark, dark cinematography and an arty narrative style.  The result is that it's not always clear what gear one should watch in, and that makes it difficult to engage. 

Comments

[maxqnz]

"Perhaps the most irritating weakness in Yuva is that there is no meaningful place for young women in the revolution it portrays. "

Change the gender, and that nicely sums up the main reason why "Fire" left me cold. So thanks for summing it up so well. :-)

As for Yuva, I wouldn't disagree with much of you've written, even though I liked the film somewhat more that you did, it seems. I would like to see the Tamizh original, especially to see if Esha's performance in the language she's most comfortable in was better. If anything the machismo type element would probably be more strongly obvious though, I suspect.

[carla]

maxqnz said: "Change the gender, and that nicely sums up the main reason why "Fire" left me cold. So thanks for summing it up so well. :-)"

Ha! :-) To defend that which is closest to my heart, though, *Fire* was a close story about one family - it did not carry the tone of a call to arms, and did not have bombastic song picturizations featuring Shabana and Nandita marching at the head of an army of women with nary a man in sight. And it wasn't called "Youth."

I didn't dislike *Yuva* as much as it sounds like I did from this review - it just left me a little underwhelmed and disappointed. I think I just spent too much time analyzing what I didn't like about it instead of what I did like about it.

[maxqnz]

"did not have bombastic song picturizations featuring Shabana and Nandita marching at the head of an army of women with nary a man in sight."

[cheap shot] Well of course not - all the men were too busy beating their wives or jerking off, or jerking off *while* beating their wives. Just as all men do. [/cheap shot]

I am grateful for your review of Yuva, though, because it's made me think twice about expending the effort to find the Tamizh version. The moustaches will be bigger, the violence more graphic, and the women's roles even more marginalised I'd be willing to bet, based on my very limited experience of Tamizh films.

[maxqnz]

Quick note: my "jerking off" comment had and (sans spaces) around it, but they were treated as real html tags and disappeared, thus removing the evidence that the comment was not intended to be entirely serious. At least now I now that HTML is enabled in comments here.

[I've fixed it so the "cheap shot" legend appears properly. -carla]

[yves]

Hi Carla,

I agree with most of what you say. I too find the film lacking a real purpose, and unnecessarily gruesome at times and violent. I too find Ajay too much of the Superman, and lacking inspiration.

Nevertheless, there are some things which I find valuable in Yuva. First, the 3 flashback sequences in the first part of the film, all very well done. Then I appreciate the Ratnam touch, with its quick pace and allusiveness, which turns me into an intelligent spectator. Finally, there is Lallan's character.

You're right to say he's not redeemed by the love that Sashi gives him, and yet: she does love him, and even if the threatens to desert him, she remains at his side, she believes in him, there's this wonderful scene where he lies on her lap, wondering if he is bad to the core... For me, he's a lost little boy, who's grown and who's looking for meaning and truth. Only he's been infected by the false truths of power and violence, and his downfall is poignant as you say because it is so well interpreted by Abhishek.

[Akshay Shah]

Superb review Filmigeek offering an alternative viewpoint, though I'm one of those who simply love YUVA and consider it a one of the best films of the new Millenium!

The movie may not necessarily be engaging for the most, and while I completely agree with you about Ajay Devgans performance here and the age factor, the movie was most definetly interesting throughout due to it's spellbinding musical score by A.R Rehman, Abhishek Bachchans first tour-de-force breakout performance as Lallan Singh and a mischieveously evil performance by Om Puri.

BTW the Tamil version of this movie AAYITHA EZHUTHU is a better film on the whole.

A.Shah

[carla]

Thanks Yves and Akshaye. I do think I short-shrifted Abhishek's work in my comments. Abhishek was the best thing about *Yuva*; his character's arc was unmotivated but given that weakness in the script Abhishek shone.

Also, Akshaye, thanks so much for the nod on Naach-gaana.

[Meera]

Hi Carla

I went to see this movie on the big screen. I left the theatre after 30 mins - couldn't stand the violence.

Also the movie left me bored. I totally agree with your review. Yes Abhishek did a good job. In fact it is Yuva that brought him heaps of praise and success.

[ad libber]

Mani Ratnam has never been very good when handling political stories. What he excels in is the potrayal of relationships and people, which is why his movies are always more memorable than they should be, for, by the end, the interaction between characters is the only thing you remain impressed by. What works for Yuva, finally, are the characters and their relationships and not the political pretenses which were neither very well defined or very inspiring.

[carla]

ad libber, I think that's a very insightful comment; when I think of the other Mani Ratnam films I have seen, *Guru* and *Dil se*, it applies equally well as to *Yuva*.

[Advait]

Hi Carla, just discovered your blog a few days ago.. and it seems like an infinitely better way to spend time at work reading your opinions on Indian/Hindi movies rather than trading stocks/bonds :S

As regarding Mani Ratnam, Im a big fan of his work and somewhat disagree with the above comment re him being uncomfortable with political stories.. In my opinion Dil Se and one of his earlier Tamil works Nayakan are the finest examples of Indian political cinema

[carla]

Hello Advait - I think I dropped the ball and forgot to thank your for all the great comments you left - I hope you are still reading and will forgive me for that. I hope you'll come back again when the trading gets dull and leave some more! :) Thanks for reading.