Tamasha **
Dir: Imtiaz Ali.
With: Deepika Padukone, Ranbir Kapoor, Javed Sheikh. 139 mins. Cert: PG
The nights draw in,
and the stars come out. Before Christmas, we’ll see Priyanka Chopra waging war
in historical epic Bajirao Mastani
and the Shah Rukh-Kajol dream team reunited for Dilwale, yet it may turn out that this week’s Tamasha needs its stars Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Kapoor most –
as points of recognition. With its self-reflexive title (“Spectacle”) and
avant-garde theatrical wraparound, Imtiaz Ali’s film is about as tricksy – and
tricky – as Bollywood gets, its debt to modernism flaunted right from an
opening splurge of stories within stories within stories. Only when our leads
show up do we know whose tale this really is. Or do we?
Even after Padukone
and Kapoor appear, as backpackers falling in love against a fairytale Corsican
backdrop, something about Ali’s arch dialogue – all quotes from and references
to previous love stories – strongly hints these are archetypes, all too aware
their fate is to be separated, then reunited in time for the credits. The
resistance to conventional characterisation is such that there’s a (not
unenjoyable) suggestion the performers are playing themselves: hot-to-trot
actors messing around on location. When Kapoor introduces Padukone to the
patrons of one bar as a major Indian movie star, we’re not so far from Julia
Roberts impersonating herself in Ocean’s
Twelve.
Tamasha keeps shapeshifting, in ways both intriguing and
self-defeating. When our lovers next meet, two years later in Delhi, they could
be completely different people: a newly ponytailed Padukone sober and serious,
Kapoor a corporate drone missing all traces of his prior spark. Ali’s exploring
that much-unpicked idea that we play different roles at different times; it’s
why he returns to the stage as a metaphor for life. Yet it’s a liability when a
movie turns its leading man into a colossal bore at a penstroke, when its
characters too closely resemble marionettes at the mercy of an off-screen
puppetmaster. Prem Ratan Dhan Payo’s
playacting was simpler, but far more emotionally rewarding.
To his credit, Ali
keeps us semi-interested. He rightly senses he can set Padukone, still the most
adorable creature in all movies, to doing nothing more than quietly reading Catch-22, and three-quarters of his
audience will be happy enough. Different styles are found for the different
stories: loose and dreamy for the Corsica scenes, something more clipped and
naturalistic for Delhi, emphasising the Kapoor character’s deadening pre-work
routine while effectively embargoing any merriment. Here, the one number in
A.R. Rahman’s typically lush if naggingly unmemorable score gets put over by a
lowly covers band, and taken up by a street beggar. In the absence of a hero,
the songs drift elsewhere.
Even as this bold
experiment fizzled out – and it really does in the second half, as Kapoor
pursues a cure for his dullness, sidelining Padukone – I retained some admiration
for its ambition. The urge to deconstruct still feels unusual in this context;
it’s not every week a Hindi film reminds you of early Resnais. The stars commit
to the conceit, playing off one another better than they did in 2013’s
birdbrained Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani.
Yet all Tamasha’s cool cleverness
finally achieves is to get in the way of rapture. When a film is so insistent
on telling us that what we’re watching is all Story, and just a story, what
chance have we of surrendering to it?
Tamasha is now playing in cinemas nationwide.
No comments:
Post a Comment