Love : Aaj Kal D(evdas) DLJ
Ye Dil ka Khel hai Dillagi,
ise bedili se na kheliye
Love may happen in a moment’s time but it takes time in getting maturity and depth.
Love is a life long affair. One may recall his very first love, done at a tender age of 14-16, while he is attending the marriage of his grand son and if that first love had remained unfulfilled he might feel a disturbance inside and a yearning might capture his mind and heart.
Many follow the thinking that when we can have multiple partners in a life time then why to settle down for a single person?
When everybody has a boyfriend or a girlfriend then how one can remain away from such a trend?
That necessity to follow the fashion on a temporary basis has been given the tag of love by a generation. So naturally no hearts are broken, no tears are shed while going for a separation because idea of union was never there in the minds of so called lovers or couples.
Liking is often confused with love. Desire to fulfill temporary need of a companion is also confused with love.
Now a days Love does not contain same meaning what it used to have till few years ago. “Love” word has lost its real meaning for millions of people.
Deep love, ideal love etc have become foreign words for people and many of them shout,”aisa love bhee kahin hota hai”?
If it is not happening to them then it does not exist at all.
Human being does not exist in a single model like a trademarked machine. Many different things can happen to different people living under similar conditions, passing through similar emotions or phases.
There are millions and billions of permutation and combination in the life of different people. That is why inspite of 9 rasas in the life of human being countless stories have been created since the birth of human being on the earth and countless stories will be created in future.
LAK shows one story, one possibility out of many possibilities existing for lovers.
Love may leave positive impact on few people. It may leave a negative impact also on some people and it may leave one’s life completely untouched. There are many probabilities and possibilities.
Love is a strange phenomenon. One may find him/herself loving more than one person and one may find him/herself to be in love with his/her spouse again and again at different times of the life. There is no single proto type out there in the life.
Love is also a form of energy and it never dies though it may change its format.
“I am in love with him/her” can be there just for the sake of following a trend popular among others living in the same social atmosphere. People may go for it for the sake of passing the time, to gain confidence before their circle members but if love drills the existence of a person even by 1 nm deep then person may come under a danger of passing through a transformation.
Ye ishq nahin asan bas itna samajh lijiye
Ek aag ka dariya hai aur doob ke jana hai
Devdas realized the depth of his love toward Paro only after her marriage with somebody else and later he could not live with the feeling of this greatest loss of his life. He lost his love because of his own cowardice and lack of determination. He died fulfilled with the feeling that ultimately he understood and accepted his own love toward Paro but at same time he died unfulfilled also because he could not live life with Paro, his only love.
Be it Ranjha, Majnu and Farhad etc., only Dilwale dulhania le jate hain. To be in love is a different matter altogether as it’s a personal matter in a society and one can be in love with anybody but to marry same person can be quite difficult in some societies and there comes a real test of love, courage, patience and determination.
Time has changed now. Now social restrictions may not be that strong and if one wants then he can marry the person of his/her liking but in modern time main obstacle may come from within a person.
COMMITMENT may look like a very big word and it may send fear to many people that they may lose their freedom.
Their own thinking and way of living may force them not to go for a deeper level of love.
First part of LAK, shows the mirror to the people living this superficial life as far as relationship between lovers is concerned. It softly ridicules this way of living and starts questioning it.
People belonging to different age segments live in a society at a given time and interaction among different age people may bring that change in their lives which would not have occurred if they had interacted with the people of their own age group only.
Life is not bonded labor of thinking of mankind. It works in its own way. Mind and thinking can not control the life on every front.
One is in love, he goes for separation because he thinks this way he will do better in professional and personal life and his lover marries somebody else. Now these facts may not necessarily stop that person not to have any feelings toward his ex lover. His feelings toward her may get more depth and more concentration. He may go 5000 miles away from his ex lover but life may bring him at that stage where he finds it difficult to forget her and inspite of all his professional success and availability of wonderfully beautiful women around him, he misses his ex partner.
One may suppress this feeling but it may not work in some cases.
LAK is story of two such lovers who realize after their break up that they actually love each other.
Like 95% of films coming out of Hindi cinema LAK also suffers from a less effective start and first 10-15 minutes don’t attract audience in an impressive manner.
Focus is kept on the sanctity of love and less on an individual character. Jai, Meera, Veer, Harleen and Vikram all the five characters come across the power of love. This will not look like a performance oriented film. Even while departing, character of Jo says to Jai, when you love, call me.
But still searchers of good acting may get satisfaction by watching Saif’s ability to act in a subtle manner in so many scenes. He has played such roles before also and at his age he may look bit old for such a role but because of his good acting skills he has acted very well in crucial scenes of the film and this performance level makes his presence justified in the film. His good performance in important scenes confirm about his good potential as an actor. In one such scene where he is trying to show off to Rishi Kapoor that it does not matter to him now that Deepika is hanging out with some other guy, his voice says one thing but his face starts getting completely different expression because he is saying things on a superficial level but inside he is getting realization that no he is lying and it does affect him.
There was no great challenge before such a good actor like Rishi Kapoor. If he jumps directly on the set from sky without even knowing the story and script and he is given dialogues and scene briefing right there on the spot even then he can play such roles very easily.
Deepika starts acting on an above average level in the last 40-50 minutes when her character starts facing an emotional turmoil. That can be an indication also to a new actress (or female actor if she likes this way) like her that what works better for her? She could have improved her performance in first half of the film.
Dev D had done an effort with modern age generation but its story had left few gaps and LAK fills few of those gaps.
LAK uses flashback method effectively to show its story and that brings freshness to the film because film’s story looks quite known in the first half as story captures what’s been happening all around and effective use of flashback gives a feeling that a film is being watched.
It was very easy for lovers, Jai and Meera to marry each other but they take other kind of decisions. There was no outside pressure to stop them from marrying each other and it was their own decision and later also they don’t have to face difficulties faced by great lovers like Majnu Ranjha etc so that way LAK does not present a great turbulence in the lives of main characters.
There are no earth shattering tragedies involved in the film. It is a story of a changed time where even there is no intrusion of families of main characters. It is a story of young people living almost an independent life with no social or family pressures. It is not easy to make a good film on such a contemporary subject and LAK scores here.
Though, unlike Imtiaz Ali’s first two films (especially SNT), where light moments were handled beautifully and they were USPs of the film/s, LAK’s light moments are not that impressive.
Very few hindi films, released in the last 12 months, have been consistently good in almost all the frames and LAK is no exception to this trend. It was a different film for Imtiaz Ali to make, so ups and downs are there in this film also.
Attractive dialogue is a positive aspect in Imtiaz Ali’s films. Considering the detailing of subject in his films he seems to be the one among very few writer-directors of present day’s hindi cinema who may write short stories which may find place in some good literary magazines.
Film may affect slowly many people and after 15 days or so, many may change their opinion about the film if they are finding it difficult to like the film at present after their first viewing when pressure is there to judge the film as a commodity product. After few days film will become independent of any such forced opinions and many may find it a film showing something that is prevailing in the contemporary society and they may accept that something extra is also there (as a goal) and which may attract many lovers.
Tags: Deepika Padukone, Dev D, devdas, Imtiaz Ali, Love Aaj Kal, Rishi Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan, socha na tha
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
IA’s both movies’ USP were dialogues and screenplay, and I believe he found his niche in telling simple stories with great dialogues and engrossing screeplays. Did he fail to do the magic this time? or did he try something else this time?
Seems, it made you ponder over one of the ‘ras’ love after a long time.
@Negi ji,
Imtiaz Ali has delivered his film and different people will receive it differently. He has tried.
He has got success or not it will vary from person to person.
You may decide once you see it.
Love stories have to have some great scenes and the flashback scene, where Saif (as Veer Singh, young avtar of Rishi Kapoor) goes to see Harleen at Railway station, may be for one last time, may bring satisfaction of getting value (some percentage) of money one has spent on the ticket.
What Harleen does there, and how effectively Imtiaj has picturised it, says about one meritorious moments among few others present in the film.
If searching technical competency then apart from good editing, background music is a thing to be admired. Just to quote a scene, when you actually see the film, please pay attention to the scene in Delhi Metro and hear the nice blending of BGM and sound of metro train.
IA has done experiment with two shallow characters and their activities where even there is no time to stay at problems and where life is running fast.
Film’s merits will win admirers, though this process may take some time (unlike the pace of the film).
Happy watching!
Thanks for the detailed explanation.
Seems like you liked the movie very much, but you need to justify you liked the movie, is that you somewhere you let down by Imtiaz.
I lot of credit should be given to Aarti Bajaj…fantastic editing…totally loved..what she started doing with Salaa-e-Ishq, she mastered it in LAK..stunning editing..to bind two different era’s..to give one scene that one-two extra seconds before moving on to others…
@Om,
Did not many people complain that they felt Salaam-E-Ishq never went into editing table or editor must have slept off.
I am not sure who they were…i belive in my own judgements..i liked the effort that went into editing Salaam-E-Ishq, the length, yes was a tad too long..but is that the only thing that an editor does? Dont you think the merging of parallel stories was good in SEI?
I would really love Vijay to do a post on some kickass editing with examples..
The movie left me with mixed feelings.
I loved the old loved story set in the sixties, which i felt was beautifully handled by imtiaz. Saif was very good as the sardar. I really felt on i could connect with the characters. The 60s era was superbly created, the mannerisms an all..even though the story was one which has been witnessed on the hindi screen a zillion times.
On the other hand, I found the modern love story was to contrived and just plain irritating.Although Saif was good ,deepika seriously needs to get some acting lessons. Also, i could never really connected with the couple. Rishi saab however was brilliant as usual.Keep it coming sir.
@cinemausher,
Seems you have not read it completely. Let down by Imtiaz Ali?
Why? His previous two films also had good, average and bad moments and this LAK also has mixture of them.
Have you seen the film by now?
i watched the film yesterday. didn’t like it much.partially because i had such high expectations fron imtiyaz ali and partially because the film itself did not hold much water. to me it seemed like an unholy mix of ddlj and kyon ho gaya naa, the latter getting the better off it. the starting of the film…. some of my friend referred ti is as power Point Presentaion could somehow not set the film in motion. the dialogues (which have ben a big part of IA’s past two films) were not good enough either.
but i agree with your point of view about IA’s eye for detail, he is one of the few directors in the Hindi Film industry who can do it without blatantly ripping off from foreign directors.
@Ankit,
If you will be able to think about film, (when you are alone), in next 12-13 days, please share what you feel around 15th of August.
@Om,
Dont know how much intereference or interaction Directors and editorsdo in/with each others work while film lies on editing table in hindi films. Do they take joint decisions or most of the time relationship between a director and editor is like that of a fashion designer and tailor and tailor is aksed to apply his technical skills and not follow any personal thoughts or philosophy.
First 30 minutes pass fleetingly with a super fast speed and there director+editor team could have improved. Especially in the first song they should not have shown the scenes which were parts of future and showing them in advance reduced their impact when they actually came on screen.
RK “Especially in the first song they should not have shown the scenes which were parts of future and showing them in advance reduced their impact when they actually came on screen.”
Actually that is exactly what i liked…giving you glimpses and keeping you a bit confused of what is being shon and why it is being shown…i just loved it yaar…i may not be able to pin-point why..its just a feeling!
@Om,
that may happen with such issues related with art form.
When subject is familiar, its expansion and detailing looks quite familiar then in a show seen on first day, such scheme, (showing future based scenes including Saif in a Sikh’s role) may not appeal to many including me as freshness is lost.
This subjectivity is fine. That is why RGV and Anuarg Kashyap handle similar scene (rather same scene), differently in their films (directed by them) and different group of actors give different impact to audience. few may prefer one scene over other.
@Raunak,
But modern love story starts quite late when love story of 60s does the seeding in Saif and Saif’s resultant behaviour makes Deepika realize about the possibile presence of love between them. Before that it was meant to be irritating as everything was shallow. Pretentions, self created illusions can not be given form of good love on screen.
…..
Yes one thing can be admitted that most of the directors of hindi cinema, who dont belong to filmi families are comfortable and aptly skilled in showing middle class characters and their behaviour and their types of stories and when they try to show ultra rich, ultra mod characters then something looks missing.
ek review yahan bhi hai.sawdhan yah hindi mein hai. hai…http://chavannichap.blogspot.com/2009/07/blog-post_31.html
@Ajay ji,
Dhanyavad link ke liye. Bahut Badhiya sameeksha hai.
@RK
Dude, I write this comment with a little hesitation and great regret. While it feels good to see someone with such passion for cinema, I wish you wrote in Hindi. Because you think in Hindi. Nothing wrong in that, absolutely. Just that your ideas will come out even better in the language you think in. Your language here is ordinary to the point that it irritatingly gets in way of comprehension of the message.
No offence, pal.