Before I commence my review, first, the almost perfunctory CA disclaimer:
[The following review, whilst not entirely neutral (It may show certain inbuilt biases that have been ingrained into me after some 20 odd years of existence on the Blue Planet Earth.), is a personal look at the piece of art, viz, Veer Zara, which like all pieces of art is priceless, but at the same time open to appreciation, criticisms and more.Here’s my take on the movie.Apologies for almost sounding analytical.]
I must confess I was encouraged to watch the movie after reading certain rather interesting reviews here on Mouthshut.com, and not as a result of of all the asinine star ratings that some pop candy newspaper reviewers do.
The title is a bit enigmatic, isn’t it? Veer Zara. Makes you want to find out, if there is some meaning to the title, or to the story.Sadly, its just the name of the protagonists. a La other great romantic story titles, like ’’’Romeo and Juliet’’.
It is interesting to note how humans connote true great love and romance only with the past, and with tragedies, and not the future.Almost as if to say to future lovers: Don’t love truly:This is what happens to you!’’.Fortunately, for the true lovers amongst us, Yash ji is not of the ’’Love-truly-and-thou-shalt-die-like-Romeo’’ school of romantics.In most Yash Chopra’s movies, while the going gets tough, the tough do not always win.It is almost, inevitably, true lovers who do.
Sometimes it is difficult to see the message that Yash Chopra, as the director of the movie is trying to put forth.But Veer Zara is a piece of fiction, and truth is stranger and more complex than fiction.So, it should be easy to follow the movie.But those who seek the truth, and sometimes find it, will be dissapointed at times by the hoopla around ’’Veer Zara’’.During its 3 hours the movie lives up to and even exceeds expectation and the at other times it fails miserably.
The good things first:The story is set in the sixties in India and Pakistan, where our Protagonist, Veer (Shah Rukh Khan, ’’Main Hoon Na’’) is an Indian Air Force pilot, doing rescue missions.On one such rescue mission to rescue passengers from a bus that has rolled off a mountain road, Veer rescues a rather pretty Zara (Pretty Zinta, no notable movies that I can recall), a Pakistani girl who is in India to fulfil her dying family member’s wish.He does so with the usual heroic daredevillery.
And as if their Lives were intertwined by the great puppeteer Himself above, our hero rescues the girl up from the Bus that is dangling precariously in a mountain side ravine..There is a deeper meaning in that rescue scene, a woman about to die being lifted above, and being given a place in a man’s heart, whose ’’function’’ is to lift the ’’dying’’ and to rescue the ’’lost’’.(A clarification may be required here though : CA is a firm believer in the freedom-to-fall-in-love-with-anyone-anywhere fundamental human right and considers arranged marriages, which are the present day norm and rage in India, as a violation a of a fundamental human right, , popular amongst the machine loving materialistic misanthropes amongst true humans.One might as well, pick designer babies off the shelves;).
Despite being a piece of fiction there is also a real untold story in Veer Zaraa.It is the untold story of the people of Punjab.A people who were torn apart due to the political reasons.But are essentially one as a culture.
And in the words of song that Zara sings when Veer is showing her his home village in rustic Punjab after rescuing her from that bus accident:
’’This land is beautiful, This land is fertile.
This land is also exactly like mine’’.(Or something like that, I watched the movie, with a little kid who seemed to be a little lyricist herself.She was loudly babbling her opinion throughout the movie.She did seem to make sense at times!)
Yash Chopra does an excellent job of portraying the rustic Punjab.There are almost true to life roles by the amazing Amitabh Bacchan, and the magnificient Malini.From the freedom of rural Punjab, to the prison cell in Pakistan, the flashbacks everytime the brilliant Shah Rukh Khan playing the senile Veer languishing in a Pakistani jail, narrates his tale to the Pakistani lawyer, Samiya Siddiqi, (Rani Mukherjee)after a solitary silence of twenty years, alone in that cell.There is a deeper meaning in that sequence too, many beautiful people on this planet, the ones who value freedom more than anything else, notably, the Mahatama, Nelson Mandela have been through such ’’periods of confinement’’, wether personal or political.They were not wrong.They were just ahead of their time.Yash ji is as well.And that is good news.At least we are looking at the past, to envision the future.
Some areas that I didn’t find very artistic:
->1: The Bus dangling from the mountain ravine looks suspiciously like a Himachal Roadways Bus.Hmm, couldn’t it just look like any XYZ bus?
->2: Shah Rukh Khan plays the part of an Indian Air Force rescue pilot, but in the opening rescue mission sequence why on earth is he flying a Swiss chopper rescuing foreign skiers?
->3: The camera work is a bit dull at times.There is virtually no panning, no camera movement in some of the scenes.The only memorable camera work is in the title song sequence and certain other song sequences.
->4: The sequence showing the Lahore Delhi Bus rolling and exploding looks a bit ’’amateurish’’.No, it doesn’t have to be ’’Titanic’’ type special effects, but if one needs to depict a tragedy like that one clearly needs to do more than roll papier mache paper models off a clay mountain and ignite it.
->5: I think it seemed a bit harsh to put in a ’’gender bender’’ dialogue like ’’Men don’t know the meaning of true love’’, in a sensitive romantic tale like Veer Zara.
To sum it all up, Veer Zaraa, is the quintessential Bollywood movie.Don’t walk into the Dress Circle expecting a magnum opus.Expect those fields of flowers, song and dance sequences aplenty.But that is not, why I’m going to recommend you watch it.
Watch it because the story explores truths and values, and respects them or atleast it endeavours to portray them accurately.I’m not going to say you are going to like what you see, but you will see what some don even like imagining. I earnestly await a Pakistani movie, on similar lines.Strings, Fuzon, and now YC, you people have done what others couldn, t.Connect people.
Keep up the good wotk!
P.S.:Those of us who have spent countless hours in Airport Lounges playing the song ’’Strange Foreign Beauty’’ by Michael Learns to Rock, this one is a see ONCE only.(That includes you Al:)