Filmi Geek

Jab We Met (2007)

Dir. Imtiaz Ali

Something I have learned about myself during my several years of watching Hindi movies is that I actually like pure love stories.  I'm content to watch a movie whose only plot point is how - not even whether - the principals will get together.  As long as the movie is well made, the characters enjoyable to spend time with, and the pairing adequately motivated, a romance alone can be enough to hold my interest.  Imtiaz Ali's Jab We Met ("when we met") is such a movie.  It doesn't have any cricket matches, or any goonda seeking redemption. It is largely unburdened by broader themes, like communalism, independence, or justice, that often distinguish masala films.  And yet, it's an engaging and sweet romance between two likeable people - and for that alone, a solidly entertaining movie. 

Aditya Kashyap (Shahid Kapoor) is a depressed, disaffected executive, the heir to his late father's huge but ailing industrialist empire.  In a suicidal funk, Aditya one day walks out of a business meeting and just keeps going.  He boards a train out of Bombay, with the seeming intention - to the extent he even has one - to leap to his death once the train hits speed in the countryside.  A kinetic young passenger, Geet (Kareena Kapoor), accosts him with a wall of chatter, and unwittingly saves his life.  Aditya escorts Geet to her family's home in Punjab, where her enormous, lively family takes him for her paramour.  But Geet confesses to Aditya that she intends to elope with a fellow she met in Shimla.  Aditya again hits the road with Geet, this time taking her to the Himachal Pradesh hill station Manali, to her Anshuman (Tarun Arora).  Along the way, Geet's vivacity touches Aditya - he falls in love, but willingly leaves her to a happy life with Anshuman.  Revived and inspired by Geet's moxie, he returns to his business and dives in with renewed vigor, setting the company back on track.  Soon, though, Aditya learns that things between Geet and Anjuman haven't gone as planned.  He sets off on another journey to find out what happened to Geet, and to help her set her life on a better course, as she helped him. 

Jab We Met draws on well-worn, even tired, romance elements.  There is nothing new in the story of a garrulous young woman wearing down the reserve of a long-suffering man.  The boisterous Punjabi family, full of strapping men equally eager to protect their womenfolk as to break into a bhangra, is another time-worn filmi trope.   Jab We Met does not exactly offer a fresh take on these themes, but it does present them with enough craft to make their very familiarity engaging, like cinematic comfort food.  

And Jab We Met is not entirely without originality.  Geet's uncompromising independence is a fairly uncommon feature in a Hindi romantic heroine.  I have seen its like before largely in movies that are close adaptations of western romances, like Pyar to hona hi tha, or Chori chori.  In those movies, the heroines have no family to speak of - their independence is wrought from necessity.  Geet, though, does have very a strong bond with her family.  She is on her own because she wants to be, because she feels a compelling drive to write her own destiny.  As she explains to Aditya in a thoughtful moment, Geet will be happy in life so long as she makes her own choices - even if she makes mistakes, they will be her mistakes.  This self-claimed autonomy gives Geet an unexpected depth in an otherwise by-the-numbers story, and is the greatest distinguishing strength of Jab We Met.  

A character like Geet presents Imtiaz Ali with a tough challenge. How do you make Geet's effusive (and often annoying) prattling get under Aditya's skin without also driving the audience to distraction?  It's guaranteed by the script that Aditya is eventually charmed by it, but the same cannot be said for the rest of us. Ali puts his actors to work walking this fine line, and while the balance ultimately comes out in the right place for me, I can't say with conviction that it would for everyone.  Kareena Kapoor seem a divisive star - I know many who positively hate her as an actor.  But she handles Geet well, toning it down when necessary to let some thoughtfulness or vulnerability show through.  Shahid Kapoor, too, proves his acting chops in key moments.  When Aditya leaves Geet in Manali with Anshuman, Shahid delivers a smile that is warm and sincere, and yet tinged with sadness.  It is a fairly subtle expression, and Shahid nails it.

As a final word, Jab We Met turns out to be a great movie to see as I get ready for my first trip to India in just a couple of weeks - its many road sequences deliver loads of lovely travel scenery that just make my heart race in anticipation.  From the Punjab to Himachal Pradesh and back again, there are soaring mountainscapes, idyllic fields, and supreme local color.  A highlight is Kareena's song "Yeh ishq hai", shot in Manali and packed with fascinating Tibetan dancers in gorgeous festival costumes.  

Golmaal (1979)

गोलमाल

Dir. Hrishikesh Mukherjee

As much as Delhi Belly is not my sort of comedy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Golmaal ("confusion") is a movie made for me.  Light, smart, and downright funny, Golmaal is a story of clever people improvising their way through a thoroughly ridiculous series of deceptions.  It is a simply delightful movie, similar in feel to Hrishida's equally charming Chupke chupke. 

With his freshly minted degree in accounting, Ram Prasad Sharma (Amol Palekar) needs a job.  To land a position with the stern businessman Bhavani Shankar (Utpal Dutt), Ram plays up his studious, serious side - dressing in traditional clothing, spouting aphorisms about the value of hard work, and concealing his passion for sports.  After Bhavani spots Ram skiving off work to watch a hockey match, the quick-thinking Ram invents a no-good, layabout twin, whom he calls (of course) Lakshman, and convinces Bhavani that the fellow he saw at the match was Lakshman, not Ram.  Bhavani, wanting to favor his protege's family, insists that "Lakshman" tutor Bhavani's daughter Urmila (Bindiya Goswami) in music.  Now Ram has to play two roles for Bhavani - the earnest respectful Ram, and the modern loudmouth, Lakshman.  Other improvisations force Ram to enlist an amateur actress, Kamla Shrivastav (Dina Pathak) to introduce to Bhavani as his mother.  Soon, when Kamla runs into Bhavani at a party, she too invents a twin for herself, so as not to blow Ram's cover.  It's not long before all hell breaks loose when Bhavani decides that the hard-working Ram is a perfect match for Urmila - she, of course, prefers the free-spirited Lakshman.

It's hard to say what is most to love about Golmaal.  It's crisply paced and smartly scripted, full of the sort of linguistic humor that I especially love (and that was also in Chupke chupke) - Ram graces Bhavani with such upstanding shuddh Hindi that Bhavani can't quite keep up.  The physical humor is hilarious and masterfully performed.  Utpal Dutt pulls a diverse array of magnificent expressions as Bhavani - wistful as Ram praises the value of the mustache, horrified as Bhavani listens to Urmila recite shamefully modern lines from a play she is acting in.  Amol Palekar, too, is charming, adorable, and very, very funny as he squirms every which way to convince Bhavani that his two sides are two different people.  One cute running physical joke has Ram constantly tugging at his uncomfortably short kurta.  The kurta itself is the result of another of Hrishida's favorite devices, movie in-jokes.  Ram borrows the kurta from his childhood friend, the actor Deven Verma (playing himself), on a movie set - it's short because it's Asrani's kurta, settled on after rejecting Amitabh Bachchan's as too long, and Sanjeev Kumar's as too wide.

Golmaal has too many funny set-pieces and running jokes to call them all out, but a few bear mention.  In one great sequence, Bhavani's widowed sister overhears Urmila rehearsing the melodramatic lines from her play, and concludes that Urmila is pregnant by a man who is now abandoning her.  Much hilarity ensues.  There are very funny running jokes about Ram's mustache.  Bhavani is nearly obsessed with the idea that the mustache makes the man, and Ram is equally attached to his own, which he sacrifices for the sake of his double life.  Every interaction between Ram and Bhavani is hilarious, whether showcasing Bhavani's over-the-top paternal affection for Ram Prasad, or his equally extreme disdain for Lakshman. 

The greatest joy of Golmaal is that even in its comedy of errors, it resonates with everyday experience.  Ram is neither as earnest as Ram Prasad, nor as breezy as Lakshman - his true character is a blend of both.  But most of us find that different aspects of who we are emerge in our interactions with various people.  I do not show the same face to the head of my department at work as I do to my closest friend.  By amplifying this sort of common multiplicity and taking it to an absurd extreme, Hrishikesh Mukherjee makes Ram - and Golmaal - supremely relatable.  Add in a lot of laughs and a few catchy songs, and the sum is just a thoroughly delightful movie.