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A Bollywood Love Story, by the Book
Movies | Review of: Saawariya
By NICOLAS RAPOLD
November 9, 2007
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "White Nights" has been adapted to film by Luchino Visconti (with the same title), Robert Bresson (as "Four Nights of a Dreamer"), and now, the Indian director Sanjay Leela Bhansali. The novella's mood-swinging tale is an ambitious choice of material, but "Saawariya," Mr. Bhansali's follow-up to his 2005 success, "Black," falters at making the romantic tragedy sing through its pangs.
"Saawariya" is about the particular pleasure and pain of partly requited love. A slightly goofy musician named Raj (Ranbir Kapoor) arrives penniless in a storybook town that resembles Venice, by way of old New Orleans. The bowler-clad songster spots a distressed woman during a nocturnal jaunt, and he's smitten. He learns her name only after their pas de deux of apprehension and flirtation, but the delicately beautiful Sakina (Sonam Kapoor) turns out to be hooked on her own obsession, a lodger (Salman Khan) who left her grandmother's house but promised to return.
As in Visconti's stylized black-and-white version, the hushed alleys and bridges are as much characters in the film as the almost-lovers, and they provide the perfect setting for the pair's missed connection. But, with characteristically elaborate set design, Mr. Bhansali also opens up the show with some grander, emerald-hued sets. Notable are the (genteel-looking) red-light district that's home to the buxom prostitute Gulab (Rani Mukherjee) who's tracking Raj's story, and the surreally light-flooded house where Raj boards with a tough old broad (Zohra Sehgal).
In flashback we learn how Sakina fell for the lodger right under her blind grandmother's nose. He's a smolderer, all right, and the callow Raj does his best to stake his own spot in Sakina's heart. His puppy-dog pursuit takes the familiar cinematic form: He comes up with clever riddles, takes impulsive trips to shadow-dappled roosts with town panoramas, and, of course, leaps onto the piano at a bar to rally the crowd with his aw-shucks big love.
There's probably a reason it's taken until now to mention the music in this Bollywood film. Raj has a couple of adequate, yearning solos, and there are two good head-bobbing extravaganzas of synchronicity (one with Gulab and colleagues, one with men interrupted at prayer). But for a movie that's touted as the first in a forthcoming wave of Hollywood-backed Indian films, "Saawariya" feels (comparatively) subdued, floating along rather than bursting forward.
That's not a deal-breaker if you're expecting the mood of disappointment inherent to the story, but the thwarted lovebirds at the center of the attempted magic are only intermittently compelling. Ms. Kapoor is sweet, and arresting in close-up, but tends to fade from memory. Mr. Kapoor throws his heart into playing the charming minstrel and good guy, and he braves ridicule in a scene featuring a peekaboo jig of joy in a towel (and, briefly, not even that), but he lacks spark, as well as any real chemistry with his costar.
The difference is obvious whenever Ms. Mukherjee and Mr. Khan, Bollywood veterans both, appear on-screen. Each Kapoor possesses the requisite Bollywood family pedigree, but only Mr. Khan and Ms. Mukherjee know how to switch on the star power, even in their sideline roles. The Kapoors' "nave young lover" routine looks bland alongside the sensual intensity packed by Ms. Mukherjee and Mr. Khan into a surging gaze. Even Ms. Kapoor seems more alive in her scenes with Mr. Khan.
"Saawariya" might simply be at odds with the inconsolable strains in the source material, and perhaps Mr. Bhansali should have felt freer in departing from its boundaries. (At a trim 147 minutes, he was obviously holding himself back a little, by Indian marathon-musical standards.) When the movie illustrates the way unattainable romance can fall short of one's desires and expectations, it may not be in quite the way the filmmaker intended.
Film Review: 'Saawariya' Bhansali's most tender ode to love
By Subhash K. Jha
Film: "Saawariya"; Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Rani Mukerji, Beghum Para, Zohra Sehgal, Salman Khan; Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali; Rating: *****
This work of art doesn't have the in-your-face flamboyance of "Devdas" or "Black" where almost every shot reached a crescendo, every passion peaked like a mid-summer sun, and every movement denoted drama. But "Saawariya" is Sanjay Leela Bhansali's most tender ode to love yet. Taking Fyodor Dostoevsky's minuscule play "White Nights", Bhansali has built huge but unimposing emotions classified by dollops of awe-inspiring studio-erected architecture that represents feelings rather than physical forms.
This is the director's most subtle and mellow creation.
Prakash Kapadia's dialogues let Ranbir's character of Ranbir Raj speak in a language that is modern and yet timelessly lovelorn.
The plot, if one may call it that, is a story of unrequited love told in shades of blue. Bhansali's narrative spins its sensuous web around chance encounters in and around a square set in a timeless land where clocks chime to the rhythm of a besotted heart and neon signs straight out of a bright Broadway pay cheeky homage to Bollywood's past, including Raj Kapoor, of course.
Ranbir Raj sings and performs at a club called Raj's Bar when he isn't chasing the enigmatic Sakina (Sonam Kapoor) across an arched bridge that symbolises the end of hope and the beginning of love.
Sakina, if you must know, is on an eternal wait. A stranger (Salman Khan) walked into her home and life, walked out and promised to return. The lacuna between longing and fulfilment is filled by a young man who dances, sings, makes faces, writes love letters, protects Sakina from the rain, but alas, cannot protect himself from the heartbreak that awaits him under the bridge.
You can see reflections of Raj Kapoor's persona from "Sri 420" and "Chhalia" in Ranbir's acting in "Saawariya". And his relationship with his outwardly harsh landlady -- played by the gloriously spirited Zohra Sehgal -- is a wonderful recreation of the bond between Raj Kapoor and Lalita Pawar in "Anari".
Ranbir's acting is a dangerously extravagant and bravura performance that could've toppled over under the weight of the character's inherent exhibitionism. But with his director's help, Ranbir succeeds.
The emotions that run across the gossamer frames of this fragilely structured play-on-celluloid are woven with the delicacy that one associates with Kashmiri carpets.
Ironically, though requiring more attention than all his earlier works, "Saawariya" is Bhansali's simplest story to date. The age-old boy-meets-girl format has been taken to the plane of purest expressionism.
The enchanting encounters shown in the film furnish the slim but haunting plot with the feeling of a play where the characters forget they are on stage.
The film's consciously created staginess is its biggest virtue. It lends an otherworldly quality to the frames. The wispy characters may or may not exist outside the @#$%&-narrator Rani Mukerji's playful mind.
Maybe she's making up this beautiful tale of one-sided love and perhaps the boy-man she took under her wings is just a figment of her imagination.
The disarming delicacy with which art directors Omang and Vinita Kumar and cinematographer Ravi Chandran have built the blue foundations of the film's ravishingly romantic imagination lifts Dostoevsky's play to the sphere of poetry.
Monty Sharma's soul-stirring music adds an entirely new dimension to the story of waiting and suffering.
As expected from a Bhansali creation, the film is bathed in visuals that overpower the senses. The sequence where Sonam runs across a gauntlet of perpendicularly hung carpets beating a dust storm out of their beautiful fabric is a moment of sensual eruption.
In "Saawariya", Sonam does not know what or whom she is running from or what she will run into. She is Nutan in "Bandini", Aishwarya in "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam" and Waheeda Rehman in "Pyasa".
"Saawariya" is like a dream where the characters themselves live in a dream world. Escape from this world is akin to death. No one dies in Bhansali's majestic make-belief world and nothing wilts. Not even love when it is taken away from the boy who loves to entertain the unhappy girl in distress.
5/5
Movies | Review of: Saawariya
By NICOLAS RAPOLD
November 9, 2007
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "White Nights" has been adapted to film by Luchino Visconti (with the same title), Robert Bresson (as "Four Nights of a Dreamer"), and now, the Indian director Sanjay Leela Bhansali. The novella's mood-swinging tale is an ambitious choice of material, but "Saawariya," Mr. Bhansali's follow-up to his 2005 success, "Black," falters at making the romantic tragedy sing through its pangs.
"Saawariya" is about the particular pleasure and pain of partly requited love. A slightly goofy musician named Raj (Ranbir Kapoor) arrives penniless in a storybook town that resembles Venice, by way of old New Orleans. The bowler-clad songster spots a distressed woman during a nocturnal jaunt, and he's smitten. He learns her name only after their pas de deux of apprehension and flirtation, but the delicately beautiful Sakina (Sonam Kapoor) turns out to be hooked on her own obsession, a lodger (Salman Khan) who left her grandmother's house but promised to return.
As in Visconti's stylized black-and-white version, the hushed alleys and bridges are as much characters in the film as the almost-lovers, and they provide the perfect setting for the pair's missed connection. But, with characteristically elaborate set design, Mr. Bhansali also opens up the show with some grander, emerald-hued sets. Notable are the (genteel-looking) red-light district that's home to the buxom prostitute Gulab (Rani Mukherjee) who's tracking Raj's story, and the surreally light-flooded house where Raj boards with a tough old broad (Zohra Sehgal).
In flashback we learn how Sakina fell for the lodger right under her blind grandmother's nose. He's a smolderer, all right, and the callow Raj does his best to stake his own spot in Sakina's heart. His puppy-dog pursuit takes the familiar cinematic form: He comes up with clever riddles, takes impulsive trips to shadow-dappled roosts with town panoramas, and, of course, leaps onto the piano at a bar to rally the crowd with his aw-shucks big love.
There's probably a reason it's taken until now to mention the music in this Bollywood film. Raj has a couple of adequate, yearning solos, and there are two good head-bobbing extravaganzas of synchronicity (one with Gulab and colleagues, one with men interrupted at prayer). But for a movie that's touted as the first in a forthcoming wave of Hollywood-backed Indian films, "Saawariya" feels (comparatively) subdued, floating along rather than bursting forward.
That's not a deal-breaker if you're expecting the mood of disappointment inherent to the story, but the thwarted lovebirds at the center of the attempted magic are only intermittently compelling. Ms. Kapoor is sweet, and arresting in close-up, but tends to fade from memory. Mr. Kapoor throws his heart into playing the charming minstrel and good guy, and he braves ridicule in a scene featuring a peekaboo jig of joy in a towel (and, briefly, not even that), but he lacks spark, as well as any real chemistry with his costar.
The difference is obvious whenever Ms. Mukherjee and Mr. Khan, Bollywood veterans both, appear on-screen. Each Kapoor possesses the requisite Bollywood family pedigree, but only Mr. Khan and Ms. Mukherjee know how to switch on the star power, even in their sideline roles. The Kapoors' "nave young lover" routine looks bland alongside the sensual intensity packed by Ms. Mukherjee and Mr. Khan into a surging gaze. Even Ms. Kapoor seems more alive in her scenes with Mr. Khan.
"Saawariya" might simply be at odds with the inconsolable strains in the source material, and perhaps Mr. Bhansali should have felt freer in departing from its boundaries. (At a trim 147 minutes, he was obviously holding himself back a little, by Indian marathon-musical standards.) When the movie illustrates the way unattainable romance can fall short of one's desires and expectations, it may not be in quite the way the filmmaker intended.
Film Review: 'Saawariya' Bhansali's most tender ode to love
By Subhash K. Jha
Film: "Saawariya"; Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Rani Mukerji, Beghum Para, Zohra Sehgal, Salman Khan; Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali; Rating: *****
This work of art doesn't have the in-your-face flamboyance of "Devdas" or "Black" where almost every shot reached a crescendo, every passion peaked like a mid-summer sun, and every movement denoted drama. But "Saawariya" is Sanjay Leela Bhansali's most tender ode to love yet. Taking Fyodor Dostoevsky's minuscule play "White Nights", Bhansali has built huge but unimposing emotions classified by dollops of awe-inspiring studio-erected architecture that represents feelings rather than physical forms.
This is the director's most subtle and mellow creation.
Prakash Kapadia's dialogues let Ranbir's character of Ranbir Raj speak in a language that is modern and yet timelessly lovelorn.
The plot, if one may call it that, is a story of unrequited love told in shades of blue. Bhansali's narrative spins its sensuous web around chance encounters in and around a square set in a timeless land where clocks chime to the rhythm of a besotted heart and neon signs straight out of a bright Broadway pay cheeky homage to Bollywood's past, including Raj Kapoor, of course.
Ranbir Raj sings and performs at a club called Raj's Bar when he isn't chasing the enigmatic Sakina (Sonam Kapoor) across an arched bridge that symbolises the end of hope and the beginning of love.
Sakina, if you must know, is on an eternal wait. A stranger (Salman Khan) walked into her home and life, walked out and promised to return. The lacuna between longing and fulfilment is filled by a young man who dances, sings, makes faces, writes love letters, protects Sakina from the rain, but alas, cannot protect himself from the heartbreak that awaits him under the bridge.
You can see reflections of Raj Kapoor's persona from "Sri 420" and "Chhalia" in Ranbir's acting in "Saawariya". And his relationship with his outwardly harsh landlady -- played by the gloriously spirited Zohra Sehgal -- is a wonderful recreation of the bond between Raj Kapoor and Lalita Pawar in "Anari".
Ranbir's acting is a dangerously extravagant and bravura performance that could've toppled over under the weight of the character's inherent exhibitionism. But with his director's help, Ranbir succeeds.
The emotions that run across the gossamer frames of this fragilely structured play-on-celluloid are woven with the delicacy that one associates with Kashmiri carpets.
Ironically, though requiring more attention than all his earlier works, "Saawariya" is Bhansali's simplest story to date. The age-old boy-meets-girl format has been taken to the plane of purest expressionism.
The enchanting encounters shown in the film furnish the slim but haunting plot with the feeling of a play where the characters forget they are on stage.
The film's consciously created staginess is its biggest virtue. It lends an otherworldly quality to the frames. The wispy characters may or may not exist outside the @#$%&-narrator Rani Mukerji's playful mind.
Maybe she's making up this beautiful tale of one-sided love and perhaps the boy-man she took under her wings is just a figment of her imagination.
The disarming delicacy with which art directors Omang and Vinita Kumar and cinematographer Ravi Chandran have built the blue foundations of the film's ravishingly romantic imagination lifts Dostoevsky's play to the sphere of poetry.
Monty Sharma's soul-stirring music adds an entirely new dimension to the story of waiting and suffering.
As expected from a Bhansali creation, the film is bathed in visuals that overpower the senses. The sequence where Sonam runs across a gauntlet of perpendicularly hung carpets beating a dust storm out of their beautiful fabric is a moment of sensual eruption.
In "Saawariya", Sonam does not know what or whom she is running from or what she will run into. She is Nutan in "Bandini", Aishwarya in "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam" and Waheeda Rehman in "Pyasa".
"Saawariya" is like a dream where the characters themselves live in a dream world. Escape from this world is akin to death. No one dies in Bhansali's majestic make-belief world and nothing wilts. Not even love when it is taken away from the boy who loves to entertain the unhappy girl in distress.
5/5
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