U Me Aur Hum A still from U Me Aur Hum
Director: Ajay Devgan
Actors: Ajay Devgan, Kajol
This is the age of creative adaptation. Ideas are few. People with ideas and talent to experience and reflect life, fewer still. We reflect films instead. Let's unapologetically admit this; pay up for the inspiration; and move on. The flip-side bothers me more. I don't refer here to a debate on plagiarism.
Anybody who calls Devgan's directorial debut entirely a knock-off of Nick Cassavetes's The Notebook should be asked which of the two films he hasn't seen. As it were, therein really lies the common problem. That is, when a filmmaker finds a material too compelling to resist an adaptation, he tries so hard to camouflage the original source that the final picture remains neither here nor there.
"I am nothing special, of this I'm sure. I am a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul. And to me, this has always been enough." So starts The Notebook, an idealistic, over-sentimental movie, and Nicholas Sparks' novel the film is based on. It speaks of a common man's love for a woman he possesses, despite pressures of time and money. A love he endures through the proverbial thick and thin (and illness). The girl in her later years suffers from amnesia. So does Kajol's character here.
Yet, The Notebook was essentially Hollywood's 'Maine Pyar Kiya' with characters interchanged (or it could've been any of '80s Bollywood): poor boy; rich girl; snob parents.
There is no such conflict here. In fact there is no conflict at all. Unless a boy looking up and acting on a girl's favourite things from her personal diary is the reason to spend over an hour in a theatre, by way of: Will she forgive him or not. Of course she will. For most parts, Devgan introduces instead two other yappy couples, such cardboard characters; you would never care why one is unhappily married, and the other happily unmarried. It is never explained. But that's another matter.
At some point you realise then the story is about tribulations of love when you have to live with someone who can't even recognise you anymore. Would you leave her for a better life, or live with her for the bitter love. Unfortunately Devgan has little patience to grab you by the eyeballs with this engaging dilemma for too long. This film only starts at the intermission, after you've spent half your time and ticket-bucks on tirelessly boring, joyless, humourless banter. It goes to several other inane places thereafter as well.
A simple film that's taken seriously is still a commercial sin, when you second-guess audiences this much (an odd Taare Zameen Par or Black isn't going to change that). So going back to where we began from. This is neither a 'weepy' for a heart-bleeding romantic; nor an immensely breezy thing to include dating collegians, mall-rats and middle-finger cynics. It fails wholly because it tries to be both. It works in parts for the central actors alone.
Despite a sketchily scribbled role, Kajol remains a picture of poise and expected charm. Devgan gives to his audience a controlled performance, and himself a role, that directors in this city have hardly trusted him with lately. His last few outings, besides Halla Bol, read Sunday, Cash, Ramgopal Varma Ki Aag.
As a filmmaker again, there is little to doubt his inclination towards the big show. While most of the film is shot indoors, the sweeping camerawork (Aseem Bajaj) is the first thing you notice still. Bajaj, an expert hand with the interiors (Chameli) evidently adores the zoom. But for Ramu's movies, I've yet to see that many tight-shots fill up frames of a film, when a subtly quiet, long-shot could've helped with the poignant. These are moments (not unique) when cinematography, though sparkling, draws attention to itself. This is also a very minor issue on a screenplay that draws so much attention away from the film itself.
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