Imtiaz Ali take a bow!… personally believe that Imtiaz Ali is at present one of the two best screen writers in the industry(Anurag Kashyap being the other).All of Imtiaz’s works(Ahista Ahista in particular) deal with existentialism. That he disguises them and makes it accessible is precisely why his films work so well for me. Kashyap while a better reader of philosophy and psychology is often handicapped by his inability to’connect’. Imtiaz has always been a fan of Dostoevsky’s works(his Ahista Ahista is a much better adaptation of White Nights than Saawariya is, although the latter is much more truer to the text), and his movies though commercial entertainers, are actually existential arguments in disguise of popular fluff.
In this screwball romance of his -Aditya(Shahid Kapur)enclosed in a bubble of confusion and dejection…meets Geet(Kareena Kapoor).Geet who explodes onto the screen with the exact vigorousness of Moet and leaves a taste just as enticing.Just like the train(where the two meet), Imtiaz Ali presents us with two characters that keep running on the same track, their passions and aspirations prove to be their steam and finally when they do stop…the journey proves to be life changing. The conversations set the tone immediately for this film and almost always(whilst seeming to go nowhere) end up with the most emphatic ruminations on life itself.The conversations are engaging mostly though they veer into the preposterous on one or two occasions.The movie is intended to be an existential journey. Shahid and Kareena represent two sides of the same argument. What Imtiaz leaves to the audience, and wonderfully so, is to grasp that these sides don’t necessarily impose to’taking’ them. There are no’sides’ in existentialism.
Many people have hinted that this is a done to death story.Talking simply from a filmic point, I disagree that this is a done to death story. Apart from Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown, I can’t remember a recent film(let alone Bollywood) which has dealt with’man’s place in the world’. Plaguing the film however are some shoddily bad technical effects.The wide angle shots give cars and trains the effect of toys, which to put it mildly, is amateurish.The conflict in this film is what essentially is termed by Roger Ebert’The Idiot Plot’, and this is precisely why the film becomes laborious in the post interval portions.The songs almost always bring the narrative to a screeching halt.And perhaps this is why such a gripping opening ultimately segues into a merely watchable film.
The actors are in top form though playing wonderfully off each other.Kareena in the showier role of the two manages to chew all scenery around her, (well almost always except for the last hour where she was too subdued and diffident for my liking).This is undoubtedly her career best performance.Shahid on the other hand, more than manages to hold his own, with a very matured performance(except for the initial reels).This is only the second time in his career where he did anything for me(the other being Ken Ghosh’s somewhat underrated Fida).The film though undoubtedly belongs to Imtiaz Ali.Ali’s strength, apart from making you care for his characters, is in making his actors bring those to life impeccably.While obviously suffering from the problem of familiarity it is Imtiaz’s writing that almost makes it work.