The biggest takeaway from Lootera, is its saris

Disclaimer: There are spoilers galore in the following article. However, since pretty much the entire plot of Lootera is in the trailer and the title of the film is an enormous giveaway as to the identity of the hero, you can go ahead and read it without hesitation. 😆

It's been hailed as the most moving cinematic climax Bollywood has presented since Anand: Sonakshi Sinha... looking tragedy-perfect right to her beautiful eyes quivering amid faux dark circles... and a silhouette of a tree that is any landscape-painter's wet-dream-come-true. Unfortunately, the only goosebumps I got from watching Lootera were thanks to the theatre's unforgiving air-conditioning. The aftertaste of watching Lootera is more like the dizzying feeling you get after a bout of window shopping. 😆 The royal blue taant sari that Pakhi (Sonakshi Sinha) is wearing when her father dies, the parrot green-gold zari border taant in another scene, the pink Benarasi, the red crepe with gold trimmings... the Bengali Carrie Bradshaws of this world will probably have tears in their eyes because the film's credits don't tell you from where the costumes were sourced. However, when one of the most significant takeaways from a film are the saris the heroine wore and neither Karan Johar nor Manish Malhotra had anything to do with said film, Lootera has a a problem.

Perhaps you will argue that it takes the heart of a brute to rip through the beautiful mesh that is Lootera is and point at the resounding emptiness within. But is overwhelming prettiness all that a film needs to be considered 'great'? Are we as audiences so fed up with Bollywood that anything that doesn't show us the Swiss Alps, a Punjabi wedding and/or gyrating women in bejewelled hot pants, qualifies as moving, probing cinema? While director Vikramaditya Motwane's fans may be incensed by this observation, but his Sanjay Leela Bhansali roots are showing. (Motwane was Bhansali's assistant director at one point.) In all of Bhansali's films, the props are the same things that try to hold Lootera together... lush landscapes, lavish sets and flattering cinematography. Bhansali managed to make a 50-year-old Jackie Shroff look good, enough said.

What did these films lack despite the abundance of beauty in each painstakingly-crafted frame? Souls. We didn't feel a thing when Paro pined for Devdas because Bhansali was too busy perfecting the shade of bronze that the candle-stand in the corner should be in. He was so busy making Aishwarya Rai look like a nurse that Vogue or a tango dancers' association would be proud of in Guzaarish, the story didn't make the slightest connection with its audience. It's not just Bhansali. In Jodhaa Akbar, for example, Ashutosh Gowariker decided historical authenticity in props and accessories were more important than story. Consequently, the film felt longer than a Manmohan Singh speech and instead of being about two people, it ended up being about laboriously designed lehengas, chokers and bhor. Motwane is neither the first nor the worst to have sacrificed storytelling for beauty. Now if he'd just come out and accept this instead of giving us the false impression that he cares about plot, nuance and relationship, there would be no disappointments.

Gleaning from the trailer, I thought Lootera was about the troubled relationship of two people who fall in love. From the voice-over in which a gently-prodding Ranveer Singh asks 'Koi kahaani likh rahi ho?' to the soft-focus cinematography, everything pointed towards Lootera being a story that was about more-than-just-cosmetic emotion.

But where is the heart of Lootera? We're told by a solemn-faced Varun (Ranveer Singh), mid-way through the film, that he is in love with Pakhi. How does the director establish this in the film? With a song. The only difference between a regular flimsy and commercial entertainer and Lootera is that the latter doesn't have Atif Aslam screaming off-key. 😆 Instead, Monali Thakur croons a lilting, earthy Sawar Loon as the lead pair are seen sauntering around and stealing glances at each other.

Why does Pakhi fall for Varun? Is it because Bengali women have an inexplicable liking for un-Bengali looking men? Is it because Varun is a cool name to have? Is it because an archaeologist in the '50s was what a scuba diver is today? Or given how infatuated she is within five minutes of running into Varun (who's chief skill appears to be looking grumpy 😆), she possibly had not set eyes on a decently-shaven man in her entire life? 😆

Ditto for Varun. Why does Pakhi melt the heart of a hardened thief? I'd bet my money on those beautiful taant saris, but that logic does not hold unless one is a vain Bengali woman, a cross-dresser with an ethnic flair or an aspiring sari designer. All the director shows us is Pakhi looking gorgeous... a truly a hardened criminal should be immune to such things. Yes, they talk. But since the director mutes them out as he plays out the film's booty of beautiful songs, we'll never know what was in the conversation that led the lead pair to fall for each other.

So, we're not sure why boy falls for girl and vice versa or why an educated zamindar blindly trusts a man he has just met to the extent that he cheerfully decides to marry his daughter to this acquaintance even though he has no one to vouch for him. Or why, a zamindar who is zealously protective of his legacy, doesn't smell a rat when a government servant shows up without warning... complete with tempo and labourers... to clear out the zamindar's home of its precious objets d'art? Note, the telephone is a known mode of communication at this time and the swindled zamindar reads the newspaper paper regularly. Yet, he seems unaware that government acquisitions were a complicated process of paperwork. Either we're dealing with a case of bad reporting in newspapers or the zamindar in question went straight to the horoscope section. 😆

Let's remind ourselves here that Lootera doesn't stop looking beautiful at any of these plot points of absurdity... from the embroidery on Barun Chanda's silk punjabi (the Bengali name for kurta), the play of natural light in his store-room, the vintage cars pottering down sinewy village paths to the camera taking a languid trip over the luminous emerald landscape of rural Bengal, Lootera continues to be unnervingly unconvincing, yet intensely beautiful. But a film need not be poetry, nor a painting. It suffices if it is just what it is meant to be: a film. For that, one of the critical components is a well-told story, and it's the one thing lacking in Lootera.