More Reactions on Saawariya

| Next Sitting through Saawariya What follows does not purport to be a review of Saawariya -- the premiere last night, at the Adlabs theatre in Wadala, left me in too enfeebled a condition to attempt such a hazardous task. So what you get are random riffs, a selection of isolated thoughts that occurred while I was watching the film. With that for preamble, here goes: Sanjay Leela Bhansali's latest film, Saawariya, raises the bar of the cinema aesthetic to dizzying heights. Using a predominantly blue palette leavened on rare occasions with greens and magentas, writer-director Bhansali and art directors Omung and Vanita Kumar Bhandula have created a surreal backdrop against which the director, aided by nuanced performances by raw yet surprisingly competent lead stars, uses magic realism, surrealism and other forms that haven't even been invented yet to tell a stirring story of love, hope, longing, loss and redemption... At some point in the future -- the very distant future, because the evolution of sensibility is a painfully slow process -- a film historian might write in that vein about the latest from the SLB dream factory. What contemporary historians and the paying public, not similarly gifted with 20/20 hindsight, will say is likely unprintable. Text: Bolly Woods | Design: Reuben NV Also read: Saawariya's stars descend on TV Next

| Back | Next Sitting through Saawariya The world of Saawariya, architecturally speaking, is the misbegotten offspring of a one-night stand between the Gothic and Saracenic styles, when both were vacationing in Venice. Thus, you have winding canals on which ply -- at times with no visible means of propulsion -- sawn-off versions of Venetian gondolas. Lining the canals in neat arrays are homes largely Gothic in shape, with the odd cupola, minaret and such betraying the Saracenic side of its parentage. The polyglot nature of this world is underlined by the neon-lit names adorning the structures: Khaikhomer, Windermere, Capitol, Gulgulshan... It is a well-lit world, with antique street lamps and blazing neon and, despite the incessant rain that pours down at the drop of a clapper-board, bright fires burning in huge barrels at street corners; these have been strategically placed by the far-sighted municipal corporation just in case anyone has any letters to burn. The latest census indicates that over 50 per cent of the population is prostitutes. There are a few yuppie BPO types who can be found in the town's sole nightclub; a smattering of elderly ladies who are someone's grandmother; and a man who scares the crap out of girls by stalking them down dark alleys or popping out of nowhere to sneeze in their faces. Prostitutes, however, far outnumber these other categories. Also read: US reaction: 'They should have called it Sa-bore-iya' Back | Next

| Back | Next Sitting through Saawariya Prostitutes are typically an oppressed bunch, eking out a precarious living by turning tricks day and night -- but in Saawariya-land, Utopian conditions prevail. Probably because there are very few men there (and one of those few men is too busy sneezing to be of much use to a girl), they don't have to burden themselves with customers. Thus, they spend most of their time lolling around in their beds, probably reading short stories written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and come out into the open air only to play impromptu games of freestyle soccer with the male lead, or to dance at the birthday party of their reigning diva Gulabji, who, if you excavate beneath the shitload of makeup, bears a passing resemblance to Rani Mukerji. On such occasions, they are dressed entirely in blue - owing, as an upcoming story in The Economist will point out, to a fiscally-savvy madam who figured out buying saris of identical color by the gross is cost-effective. The two latest recruits, by the way, are dressed in green; the madam is reportedly waiting for 22 more girls to join the gang, so she can buy blues for them in one cheap job lot. Don't for a moment imagine that their life is all jam. Reminders that life is grim and earnest come from the occasional tears, largely prompted by the male lead's idiocies, and the close-up of one call girl's face sporting a perfectly-placed burn mark. Video: Rani Mukerji on the Kapoors Back | Next

| Back | Next Sitting through Saawariya Your heart goes out to the male lead, from the moment you first set eyes on him. Poor darling -- he is parentless, homeless, penniless (having spent all he owned on more chains than you find on prisoners condemned to death, and those nifty diamond studs in his ears), friendless... And witless. Until he stumbles on a presumably senile old lady (Zohra Sehgal, wasted in a role she will have a tough time living down) to adopt him, he sleeps in the open with a soccer ball for a pillow. Trouble is, the soccer ball is round (big surprise, that), and keeps rolling away, causing the poor fellow to crack his head on the unfeeling stone and wake up to see Rani's painted face leering down at him. If only he had friends, they would have advised him to let half the air out of the ball to keep it from rolling away, but never mind that. He is a good-looking boy, Ranvir Kapoor is, and his most striking feature is the cleft in his chin. You get a good view of that feature, because the camera zooms up close, very close, a good bit of the time. In fact, the camera gets so close, and his face is consequently so magnified, that to your fevered imagination that cleft seems to be the size of a bathtub in a luxury resort. You've got to love the boy, for more reasons than one. There is the bowler hat and, on occasion, the borrowed umbrella that brings home to you, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, that the Raj Kapoor legacy has found its latest torchbearer (In case you missed that message, one of the buildings sports an outsize neon sign that says, with touching simplicity, 'RK'). There is the endearing earnestness with which he mouths the silliest dialogues ever penned, often struggling to be heard against the background music. A brief segue about the music, which at its best is needlessly loud and at its worst, unbearably cacophonous. At times it so loud, it measures a good 7.0 on the Richter scale. The theatre shakes under that unrelenting assault -- though on second thoughts, those tremors could have been caused by Dostoevsky turning over, and over, and over in his grave, poor fellow. Never mind that, let's continue with the reasons why you should love the latest roll-out from the Kapoor khandaan. There is his toned bod, and the cute butt you almost see when he uses the flimsy towel around his waist like a matador's cape. My spies tell me audiences in the US can actually see the whole butt and nothing but the butt -- a circumstance that earns this film the dubious distinction of being India's first to merit a PG rating. (I wish we had the PG rating here - my parents, always concerned for my well-being, would have guided me away -- far away -- from this movie.) Continuing the list of reasons to like Ranvir, there is the faux Hrithik Roshan dancing style where you throw your hands and legs about like you don't want them anymore, and the random fits of epilepsy that make his lady love laugh and the rest of us cry. To be serious for a minute, it would be terribly unfair to judge this boy on the basis of this film; he deserves a better litmus test than a hackneyed script, inept dialogues, and a director who let his incompetent evil twin take over the helm can provide. Also read: Ranbir Kapoor: I'm a bit scared Back | Next

| Back | Next Sitting through Saawariya Sonam Kapoor has 'it' -- that indefinable something that is not talent, or looks, or voice, or anything you can put a name to but which can, given the right circumstances, strike sparks off an audience. In fact, she has so much of 'it' that it shows even despite Bhansali's best attempts to reduce her to a cardboard cutout. She lives in a haveli with a blind grandmother who keeps her captive through the wildly original medium of outsize safety pins, and an aunt or some such about whom the less said the better. The family business is making carpets; at this, the family is a disastrous failure, judging by the rows upon rows of unsold, dust-covered carpets that Sonam beats up with a stick when she is particularly frustrated by the atrocities the script inflicts on her. The role requires her to run the gamut of expressions from A to B. There are times when she giggles and there are times when she cries, and there are times when she gigglers and cries at the same time, creating facial effects that would have interested the late Marcel Marceau. Like Ranvir, she is more to be pitied than censured; it is not her fault that her debut vehicle turned out to be a leaky boat. Also read: Hyperactivity and humour with Sonam Kapoor Back | Next

| Back | More Sitting through Saawariya I could go on, but never mind - you get the point: Saawariya is a tragic waste of all the time, effort, money (reportedly Rs 35 crore) and creative talent that went into its making. At a press conference, back in the days before he stopped promoting the film, Salman Khan maintained that Saawariya is based not on Le Notti Blanche, the Luchino Visconti film of 1961 vintage (or, presumably, even on the 1971 French version, Quatre nuits d'un r?ur, or Four Nights of a Dreamer, helmed by Robert Bresson), but on White Nights, the 1848 short story written by Fyodor Dostoevsky (that is acknowledged also in the title credits). (Incidentally, fans of Tamil movies will recall a 2003 film starring Arunkumar and Seema Biswas, called Iyarkai, that won for producer VR Kumar and director Jananathan the 2004 National Award for best regional feature film.) I am glad he cleared that up - not so much for the clarification itself, as for the implicit evidence that Salman is not the muscle-bound stud everyone takes him for. To hit the remaining high spots, it felt good to see the Torch Lady, the iconic Columbia Pictures logo, introducing an Indian film; it felt bad when the premiere began without the national anthem being played. When the film came to an end, one member of the houseful audience clapped, another joined and then a third. Most of us whirled around to see who was making the noise -- and even those three celebrants promptly lapsed into silence. Go to enough premieres and you will realize how significant that is -- preview audiences will stand to almost any film, given the slightest excuse. That the audience didn't, here, is the best litmus test for the appeal of Bhansali's latest. The movie reminded me of a devastating critique I once read, somewhere. Referring to a total turkey, the reviewer wrote: 'This film has a certain elusive appeal - it eluded those of us who saw it.' Amen. Don't Miss: Showcasing Saawariya

the more & more i read about this movie the more i wanna watch it!!! 😃

Originally posted by: tangina r

the more & more i read about this movie the more i wanna watch it!!! 😃

init..same here😃..cant wait to watch it😊

eeekss!! this one is the worst!!! but i kinda liked the sarcasm in the write-up!!

still praising sona and ranbir!!! yay to that!! 😃 it's a must watch for the two rockstars!!

whoa... this guy REALLY trashed it didn't he? i wonder how ppl can be stupid enough NOT to see that THIS IS ONE FILM where you don't apply logic... or try to understand what sort of architectural forms mated to produce the breathtaking blue progeny that is the backdrop of saawariya... hellooooo????? gothic and saracenic???
😆
anyway... i'm still dying to watch it! to each, his own views, and we'll leave it at that, i guess..... 😉

hopeless story just work in multiplex.

this is review 😆 how stupid...they havent even relased it in america yet and thy have the US reacton as Saboriya 😆 😆

god! this is the most uninteresting and boring review i'v ever read...looooong and pompous....actually i didnt even read it well...

Originally posted by: Theatre

this is review 😆 how stupid...they havent even relased it in america yet and thy have the US reacton as Saboriya 😆 😆

actually it was premiered in a film festival in new york. i think the reviewer was there. they showed this on tv. mira nair, konkona, milind sonam were there.

Courtesy:mumbaimirror.com

Saawariya
Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Actors: Ranbir Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor




In what may have become a stock role for her now, Rani Mukherjee plays a prostitute, Gulab (or Gulabji), in this film. She is in love with her young hero (Ranbir) who has fallen for a demure Indian beauty he'd met only the previous evening.

The young boy calls himself Raj. He had just landed into a strangely fictional, unpopulated whore-house town of blue home dcor, coloured lights, fancy boats, and a delicate bridge. He'd bumped into a lonely girl Sakina (Sonam) he immediately fancied as his own. Gulabji had warned her friend then, "Don't love someone so much that you begin to hate yourself." The advice proved prescient. His love may have been as instant as inexplicable. The girl's denial had a meaning. She said she belonged to someone else, one Imaan (Salman Khan). She said she'd prefer to wait for him.

The night the hero realises he is unlikely to have luck with his lady, he walks up to Rani's Gulabji to sleep with her. She turns him down: "Kaagaz ke phool se kabhi ittar bante dekha hai?" (Ever seen perfume getting extracted from a fake flower?). Earlier, explaining her profession to the hero's old landlady (Zohra Sehgal, a gentle casting touch there), she'd said, "You have an ancestral home, you made a guest-home of it. I had a body; I made a guest-home of that. We're in the same business."

Some more such gems emanate from Gulab; plain banalities from elsewhere. When you sense this lack of lyricism around, it seems odd that the writers could have rested all their poetry into one character. And not even a principal one at that. Gulabji is at best the Chandramukhi to her shaved Das (from no assigned period of course). She appears for a few minutes. She narrates this story of unrequited love. The film has no setting either, much like Bhansali's last (Black).

The director does make it clear this time though, that the silly special effects of a place unknown (and other well-lit wood-work you see) are merely of the narrator's imagination.

The hero sings at a bar called RK. The rain, the black-umbrella and the Chaplin-hat come from the same studio the bar pays its tribute to. So does the hero initially, borrowing in heavy doses mannerisms from his late grandfather, Raj Kapoor.

The similarities end there. This is in every way a faux, affected Broadway or West-End musical shot on 70 mm celluloid: the way the West naively assumes a Bollywood movie is. I am not surprised Sony Pictures, a top Hollywood studio, green-lit this as their entry into Bombay cinema.

Bhansali carefully chose his leading couple from the mom-and-pop store movies in Mumbai get made from. The move made commercial sense. He gives them instead much less scope to prove any skills. Ranbir spends most of his screen-time a self-aware drama-king. Sonam remains forever a dimpled, grinning portrait of awkward reticence that's passed off for feminine charm.

The picture itself then is merely a post-card, where every passionate aspect draws attention to itself, but the protagonists, or their intimate story. The dirt from the carpet blowing in the wind as the leading lady walks through it; the white clock tower that faces the imagined town; the huge bust of Buddha by it…

You notice everything, but care least for the two reasons this was probably intended as a tale of blind, idealistic love. The director is evidently busy proving himself as the master of images. It is much easier to connect with choreography, song or architecture; harder to appreciate them so disjointed or disconnected from an emotional core. Sensations are undone by cinematic ambitions. And you can rarely tell a tingling warmth beneath that grand, cold ornamentation.

Fyodor Dostoevsky may have disapproved. So perhaps Luchino Visconti or Robert Bresson, both directors who have filmed the Soviet writer's short-story (White Nights) before.

Before the publicity-industrial complex from Patna to Piccadilly Circus took over in 2005, Bhansali's Black was largely a moving film. Overrated; yes. But that's a knock on the rating. Saawariya is not even vaguely poignant, touching or weepy. It misses you almost entirely. The review ends here. May the myth prosper!