Saawariya - Page 10

the critics bash every movie 😡 so i dun go by their review

Taran Adarsh-ji keh rahe ki:

SAAWARIYA
To cut a long story short, SAAWARIYA disappoints big time. You expect the moon from this genius film-maker, but you're disheartened as you watch his new creation.

OM SHANTI OM
Cut the crap, cut the gyan-baazi, cut the will-it-won't-it work naatak. Shah Rukh Khan and Farah Khan's OM SHANTI OM is a true-blue masala entertainer. If MAIN HOON NA was a chauka, this one hits a sixer!

Taran Adarsh gave KANK a 4.5 out of 5, so I don't think he can be relied on completely. I think he is biased towards SRK. However, he's probably right this time because even the Rediff reviewers have given OSO a much higher rating than they gave Saawariya.

Originally posted by: *salil*

Taran Adarsh-ji keh rahe ki:

SAAWARIYA
To cut a long story short, SAAWARIYA disappoints big time. You expect the moon from this genius film-maker, but you're disheartened as you watch his new creation.

OM SHANTI OM
Cut the crap, cut the gyan-baazi, cut the will-it-won't-it work naatak. Shah Rukh Khan and Farah Khan's OM SHANTI OM is a true-blue masala entertainer. If MAIN HOON NA was a chauka, this one hits a sixer!

Originally posted by: .:.Suhana.:.

Taran Adarsh gave KANK a 4.5 out of 5, so I don't think he can be relied on completely. I think he is biased towards SRK. However, he's probably right this time because even the Rediff reviewers have given OSO a much higher rating than they gave Saawariya.

I am not endorsing TA's views here. I have posted TA's review comments because so many here think that his reviews are good.

If he has given 4.5/5.0 to KANK, then I better NOT watch OSO...😆 😆. KANK is one of the 5 worst ever (story-wise) movie that I have seen..

Originally posted by: *salil*

KANK is one of the 5 worst ever (story-wise) movie that I have seen..

couldn't agree with you more...btw, I wasn't trying to imply that you are endorsing TA's views. I was actually just saying "Hey, what do you know, he got one right!" Probably shouldn't have quoted you. 😳

OSO will most likely be pure over the top entertainment like Main Hoon Naa...I don't mind that type of stuff, but it certainly doesn't deserve to win awards.

wait, aren't we discussing this in the wrong place? It's unrelated to music...sorry mods!

Oh, how Sanjay Bhansali hams!

Raja Sen | November 08, 2007

Sonam Kapoor in Saawariya

First off, using the ever-fantastic words of Pete Townshend entirely out of context, The Kids Are Alright.

No, Ranbir and Sonam Kapoor -- megahyped bachchas sharing a surname but entirely different Bollywood legacies -- aren't, as the hype might have had you believe, the instant quick-mix superstars ready to take Bollywood into the next generation. He's occasionally likeable, she's undeniably attractive. And that's that. As said, they're alright.

The problem lies with their puppeteer, the all-conquering badshah of bluster. Sanjay Leela Bhansali takes Fyodor Dostoevsky's White Nights -- a stark, lovely story about romance born and rekindled over four nights -- and, picking out its barest heart, proceeds to smother it in mixed-up layers of trite melodrama. And money. And so this soft core, this tender tale, is hidden -- under several reams of indiscriminately wrapped silk and velvet, of loud noise and harsh light, of bewildering backdrops and the colour blue -- so deep beneath smug self-indulgence and a bizarre budget that you can't even hear the heartbeat anymore.

The story is simple: a minstrel, full to the brim with can-do enthusiasm, falls in love with a fair maiden. All would be well, except she is awaiting her faraway lover. Doggedly the singer tries to awaken her love, while she loyally stalks the bridge assigned to the some-night rendezvous. Over four nights, love, loyalty and longing are all born and questioned.

We're told, most redundantly, that this is a tale set in a different world. It is a fairytale realm reminiscent of the classic Prince Of Persia video game, with gondolas and prostitutes scattered around a wet Venetian nightmare. The architecture is whimsical, as is the generous use of flickery neon. Clock towers with hyperactive needles coexist merrily with sprawling mosque courtyards and numerous tiny cobalt by-lanes lead arterially out of the central tiny bridge area, most such roads seeming to lead to the exorbitantly built brothel or the one-resident-only guesthouse. It sounds fantastical and brilliant, and could certainly have been, except it doesn't really have a concept. Or a point.

Thus Omung Kumar gets to play madman art-director, Bhansali letting him go wild and asking only that he be theatrical and sporadic. 'Just paint everything blue and leave lots of room for Raj Kapoor film references,' the brief could well have read. And so runs the gamut, from azure to cerulean, with walls and pillars and peculiar choices of artwork.

And while dollars are positively dripping from the scenery, nothing is spectacular. Remember MF Hussain's Gajagamini? Now replace the high concept in that film with a big budget. The result is Saawariya, an underwhelming waste. Thousands of Bollywood songs are shot with madcap little unreal backdrops; Bhansali has just used one of those for his entire film. One imagines it'll be a while before Sony Pictures grandly bankrolls another Indian project.

Black, flaws and all, was very well shot. Here one can imagine cinematographer Ravi K Chandran stifling a yawn. And if, for God's sake, you're building an absurdist city-of-many-cities, at least leave physical room for some mindblowing camerawork. There are a few -- four, count them -- well-executed shots in Saawariya, most of them simple cutaway shots. What in the world has been thought-through in this movie?

Not the characters, certainly. Ranbir's Ranbir Raj tells Sonam's Sakina that she knows everything about him: his name, where he lives, what he does. One assumes that is all there exists in their character sketches as well. Oh, and the boy is told to be restless, the girl, patient. Outside of that, there is no depth, despite the actress' limpid eyes and the actor's sometimes cheeky grin. These are cardboard characters, lazily written and ineffective. In a stylised world impossible to relate to, at least the protagonists should have been flesh and blood.

Instead, the director hams.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali needs to be thwacked with a subtlety stick, much like Sakina messily beats carpets hanging around her. Everything is overblown and hyper-real in the director's head, and there is no room for soft reality. The characters populating his movie, therefore, cannot sob without hysteria or laugh without sliding off a chair. A glare is held for ten minutes, a coy glance for five. And the dialogue is immeasurably grating, making the film's sub-130 minute length seem twice as long.

It is a testament to the star-kids, then, that they've gamely gone through these dizzying motions without afflicting career hara-kiri. Ranbir, playing a character labeled over-lovable from start to scratch, is often painfully exaggerated and moronic, but he does salvage a few moments of charm where you feel for him -- even if only sympathy at his debuting in this production. There might be hope, sure. But then there's that towel song, the most homoerotic picturisation in Hindi cinema, which could likely take a few years to live down.

The gorgeous Sonam Kapoor is armed with a great laugh -- almost as infectious as her father's -- and one wishes she was allowed to simper softly, instead of having a clearly overdubbed plastic giggle plastered onto her. She has the worst lines and moments in the script -- save for Rani Mukerji's, where Bhansali clearly cashed in all his Black chips -- but there is a merciful agility to her movement, a fluidity to her style. It is a character impossible to like, and yet she warms you up to her.

The only times in the film the kids really, really work are when the tension abruptly breaks and they burst into laughter. It is almost as if -- or, possibly, because -- the director yelled cut and two old friends dropped the painful masks and chilled. God, how much better a Jab We Met [Images] style debut would have been for these two.

It's hard to fathom what Bhansali expects anybody to like in this film. With close to a dozen songs assaulting us once every seven minutes, on average, there is no room for the narrative to flow. The background score is deafening, and the writing is so emotionally manipulative -- wait for the way Ranbir convinces Zohra Sehgal to let him bunk with her -- it makes you want to pen down an alternate script in immediate protest. And, despite conjuring up moments with legends like Sehgal and Begum Para -- irresistible when devoutly mouthing Mughal-E-Azam dialogues -- these are too few and far between. Are we actually supposed to enjoy Ranbir doing dad Rishi's rabblerousing lines from Karz, or laugh at Rani's pathetic half-malapropisms? Please.

What's the deal, Mr Bhansali? This isn't a Luchino Visconti remake, as many had feared, but a bizarre reworking, an overbaked version of a very simple romance. Dozens of dancing prostitutes do not a Federico Fellini make, sir.

This film opens with Ranbir, off-screen, persuading a whore to listen to two lines of song. She deigns to listen and he picks up his blue six-string. And instead of an eager-to-please youth fumbling with a scratchy guitar, we get -- after a sudden title screen with the star-kids' name, a la Rajnikanth a mega song-and-dance production, a full-blown intro. No wonder the heartbeat is muted.

As Gulabjee, lady of the night, would say, I don't likes.

does anyone know when it really is gonna release in the netherlands?
plzzzzzz...tel me> 😃

'Media manipulation won't kill my film': Sanjay Leela Bhansali

Mumbai, Nov 13: Annoyed with critics who have panned 'Saawariya', Sanjay Leela Bhansali says prejudiced criticism won't harm his film because people are going to watch it despite the bad reviews.

'Media manipulation won't kill my film. I'm open to healthy criticism and debate. But not prejudiced criticism. In the opening weekend we've had massive audiences all over the world connecting with the film,' Bhansali told IANS in an interview.

'The huge barrage of criticism hasn't prevented people from appreciating my merger of raga-based melodies with a Broadway-styled play. Only a handful of critics are trying to influence the audience to go against the film. The final verdict comes from the unbiased viewer,' he added.

Based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's play 'White Nights' and starring Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor, the film has collected an estimated Rs.500-570 million in India over its opening weekend.

'It has got the biggest opening ever in the history of Indian cinema with two newcomers in the lead,' Bhansali claimed.

Excerpts from the interview:

Q: The collections worldwide for 'Saawariya' seem to be at loggerheads with some of the reviews at home.

A: You tell me when, where and how these negative stories about 'Saawariya' come from. It collected an estimated Rs.500-570 million in India over its opening weekend. This is biggest opening for an Indian film with newcomers in the lead.

Q: Commercial success has never been a problem for you.

A: 'Saawariya' has got the biggest opening ever in the history of Indian cinema with two newcomers in the lead. And it opened with a film featuring the biggest star of the country. Yes, some people find 'Saawariya' a little slow in pace. But most people love what I've done. Media manipulation won't kill my film. I'm open to healthy criticism and debate. But not prejudiced criticism. In the opening weekend we've had massive audiences all over the world connecting with the film.

Q: Are audiences having a tough time accepting 'Saawariya' because you've built another kind of expectation through your earlier films?

A: The huge barrage of criticism hasn't prevented people from appreciating my merger of raga-based melodies with a Broadway-styled play. As far as I'm concerned, people love 'Saawariya'. Only a handful of critics are trying to influence the audience to go against the film. They didn't succeed with 'Devdas'. They won't succeed in conditioning the audience's mind. The final verdict comes from the unbiased viewer. And the audience is far more intelligent than me or the learned critics.

My effort to merge art with commerce cannot go to waste. If today Bimal Roy made 'Sujata' or 'Do Bigha Zameen' he'd be slammed by critics. They'd destroy him. Where are films like 'Bandini' and 'Jagte Raho' today? Once in a blue moon we get a film like '36 Chowringhee Lane'.

Q: A lot of people have commented on the imaginary world that you've created.

A: I'm glad they noticed it. It's a fairytale world that existed in my mind. I chose to tell the story of my romantic world through the eyes of a prostitute. Why should we only locate our films in places that already exist? There're so many genres of cinema. Why can't I make a film that exists in a state of the abstract and unattainable?

Q: People think you are too enamoured of the studio style of filmmaking.

A: And what is wrong with that? I find the atmosphere in a studio creatively liberating. Just as you cannot record a song without a studio, I can't make a film without the studio atmosphere. I carry within myself indelible influences of Bimal Roy, K. Asif, Raj Kapoor and Vijay Anand. They created their cinematic world on a studio floor. Of course, real locations are also beautiful. I opted to film 'Saawariya' in a certain studio-generated atmosphere and a certain colour that to me represented the flavour of love.

I think the magic of cinema lies in the director's ability to create his own world. And that's the abstract world, which audiences are connecting to in 'Saawariya'. Even in Satyajit Ray's masterpiece 'Pather Panchali', realism is finally only an illusion.

Q: Would you say filmmakers today are trying to persuade us into believing that cinema is about joy and laughter?

A: Not all, only some filmmakers who are trying to take cinema back to the 1970s and 80s and some critics who have made the crappiest films are sitting in judgement over filmmakers who dare to dream. They've an agenda behind their opinion.They must remember one thing - good art can never be stifled. They tried to write off Madan Mohan by saying his soundtracks didn't succeed. Today he's the most revered music composer.

Q: Raj Kapoor's influence is predominant.

A: Why not? I wanted my impressions and influences of Raj Kapoor to be prominent when his grandson was being launched. And what a grand grandson Ranbir is! I wanted Raj Kapoor's blessings for my film. His 'Ram Teri Ganga Maili' is one of my 10 favourite films of all times. 'Saawariya' has a lot of RK's 'Awara', 'Barsaat' and 'Sri 420'. We need to re-acquaint audiences with masters of our cinema like Raj Kapoor.

Q: Why did you decide to adapt Fyodor Dostoevsky's play 'White Nights'?

A: Why shouldn't I? If I did Saratchandra Chattopadhyay ('Devdas'), why not international litterateurs? I also want to do Shakespeare and other world classics. I want to adapt all kinds of literature. Dostoevsky's 'White Nights' was written in the 19th century but is relevant to this day. The truth about love and sacrifice doesn't alter from era to era, or through different time zones.

Q: Happy with the outcome of 'Saawariya' so far?

A: According to me, it's the biggest hit of my career so far. I'm proud I've created a superstar in Ranbir Kapoor.
5

It has been a waste of Ranbir and Sonam Kapoor's Launch. Both the actors could have done better.