The assembly of the half-hearted reviewers and spectators may now adjourn. Forget a fortnightful of yes, buts, oh-well and maybes, of mumbled praise and full-throttle yucks " whatever the welter of opinions " still here's a film which I'd call flat-out wonderful.
Tamasha, written and directed by Imtiaz Ali, is droll, visionary, unsparingly subjective and deeply moving. Because principally, it deals with the theme of mediocrity or how to avoid it and excel ever after.
Like it or not, mediocrity is a terminal illness which most Bollywood filmmakers suffer from nowadays, but are too elated by financial success to perceive their shortcomings. In fact, Imtiaz Ali's earlier works could be stamped with the M-word, too, Jab We Met standing out as an exceptional entertainer though, a playful spin on a young man who has issues with his professional and private lives till the entry of an angel of mercy.
Quite curiously, the director's male lead protagonists are constantly at war with themselves, especially the psychologically buffeted Rockstar and the emotionally retentive criminal of Highway. By comparison, Imtiaz Ali's women are the archetypal support systems.
Another common thread running through his scant output of six films in 10 years is that his people behave differently in different environments, thrilled with a sudden communion with nature, boutique hotels and bistros, but challenged on returning to their mundane domestic lives " where fading havelis and heavenly high-rises, cosy cottages and squalid jhuggis co-exist as emblems of social disparity. Travel to unknown destinations, it is suggested, to experience a blissed-out breakaway, but be warned, you have to return to reality.
Such a simplistic philosophy, if I may call it that, has amounted to conveying the obvious " repeated to a degree even in Tamasha which shuttles between the tourist-friendly vistas of Corsica and the sleek towers of Tokyo to the still evolving urbanscape of New Delhi and a going-to-seed bungalow in Shimla.
The difference is that the change of milieus and lifestyles actually works this time around. Delhi's atmosphere of wannabe sushi restaurants, lurching autorickshaw rides below the expressways, Gurgaon's chintzy corporate offices and faintly-lit roadside dhabas are as believable as they get. Reality, at home, bites.
Oddly, at the outset the amoeba-like film goes all over the place, aggravated by editing cuts of the slaughterhouse kind (Aarti Bajaj's trademark). Leapfrogging between time spans " there's an annoying first here what with a caption signalling a FLASHBACK. Presumably, that intervention was done just in case the viewer's too dumb to get it. Indeed, the first half of Tamasha is a cat's cradle of confusion. Erm, what's going on with these zips between the past, present and future? Sure, a non-linear narrative can be extremely inventive. But this?
Auspiciously, the second-half falls into place. In hindsight, that mincemeat editing makes total sense, enticing a repeat viewing. Frankly, some films have that quality of improving on a repeat look, striking firm roots besides facilitating a comprehension of its layering. To cite a random example, initially Ingmar Bergman's The Touch (1971) had struck me as childishly banal. On rechecking, the drama centering on adultery expanded, offering bold insights into the foreplay of human behaviour. Not that Tamasha dares to probe its in-built sexual frisson, except for a teasing bedroom encounter, ruined alas by the censor board's diktat of bleeping out key words in the dialogue.
Excisions apart, the film's undiluted strength are the conventional yet wary-of-clichs Ved Vardhan and Tara Maheshwari who team up far away from home. They're footloose, fancy free, promise each other that they won't fall in love, exchange names and erase themselves from their memory files after a brief encounter. That they can't honour the promise is more than predictable. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that jazzmatazz.
Hang on though. The plot twists and how. Ved isn't the fun guy that he was, coerced by his father to follow the straight and narrow path. He's good at the workplace, okay, but not brilliant, mouthing corporate jargon which sounds robotic.
For a beautiful mind to endure mediocrity is tragic. To sustain that mediocrity for much longer than necessary is bound to culminate in frustration, restlessness and rebellion. "What the f**k (bleep) am I doing?" he appears to cry out loud after years of becoming a samosa-knotted-tie-and-suit in a cribb'd and confined office. At one juncture, his nouveau riche boss guarantees greater heights to be achieved on the corporate ladder. Ved's response is pricelessly lunatic. Vapourless Ved is on the way to going unhinged.
"But this is so not in character!" you might say, and correctly so. The thing is that Ved doesn't want to do the correct thing, he slides off character, doesn't answer to contrived motivations and keeps springing up surprises: pleasant ones if you have a regard for iconoclasts, unpleasant ones if you're the sort to savour security.
Indeed, it would have been facile to detail Ved's childhood " his precocious fascination for mythical stories ranging from excerpts from the great epics to the apocryphal romance of Prince Salim-Anarkali " merely as a head-starter. Effectively, the child's first impressions are served intermittenly in the dramaturgy. As an adult, Ved delights in spinning yarns. So what if he's caught up in a woolly tangle himself?
Largely, the opinion has been that Tamasha lacks a coherent storyline. To that I'd say, the story here is about the myriad forms of storytelling as practised by a hilltown raconteur and then by Ved elocuting a gangster plot before an amused Corsican crowd. In addition, he can tell tall tales to his granny and break into a Bollywood Laila-Majnu take-off before a mirror. Quite deliciously done.
As for Tara Maheshwari, she is clearly drawn to the goofball but dismayed when an evening out in Delhi turns out to be a crashing bore. That's not the boy she met. They break up. And the ensuing heartbreak forms the heartbeat of the story. Tara, in a way, is his conscience keeper and a catalyst for his creative spirit. Suffice it to say that although Tara doesn't occupy as much footage in the screenplay as Ved does, her place in the relationship is that of an equal if not superior force. In the event, Ranbir Kapoor seizes the opportunity to be mercurial while Deepika Padukone is the rock " steadying influence. Both the performances " the showy contrasted with the restrained " are extraordinary.
Imtiaz Ali's use of A.R. Rahman's music to propel the story forward relies heavily on emotive montages rather than lavishly choreographed set pieces. Also, he employs a completely unconnected troupe of Punjabi balladeers to perform a robust number, even while the shots show Tara walking through the Kolkata airport. Arbitrary for sure, but why not? Plot events and music can segue into one another, without a song serving merely as a visual's catchline.
To put it plainly, Imtiaz Ali breaks the rules of mainstream Bollywood cinema. He doesn't spoon-feed. Neither is he embarrassed about advancing the notion that a love story needn't be told with a kindergarten cause-and-effect logic.
Fidgets, pauses and silences ripple through whole scenes at times without any dialogue interruptus. That's what cinema is about. If this isn't exciting, then tear that word from your dictionary.
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