| CULTURE & SOCIETY |
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SPOILERS AHEAD |
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From
Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 21, Dated 26 May 2012 |
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| CULTURE & SOCIETY |
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SPOILERS AHEAD |
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Juliet’s Got a Gun
By Sunaina Kumar
EARLY IN THE film, Grandfather Chauhan, the aspirational MLA explains to an onlooker that in his household “mardon ki bhasha” prevails. What is meant to be funny becomes an eerie testimony as the movie unfolds. It’s not often one speaks of gender politics and a popular Hindi film. Ishaqzaade, however, begs to be reviewed through that frame. After Shruti Kakkar (Anushka Sharma in Band Baaja Baraat) and Kusum Duggal (Neetu Singh in Do Dooni Chaar), two of the most flesh and blood and engaging female characters in recent movies, Habib Faisal dared to imagine Zoya (Parineeti Chopra): a defiant, heady, impossible creature, hard not to love. And then, he chickened out. The audience is left itching for Zoya’s avenger avatar post intermission, and all one gets is a sissy, who sets out to win the love of a worthless lout at the behest of her mother-in-law. “Is janwar ko insaan bana ke dikha,” says MIL, and we cringe.
Zoya and Parma, who belong to two warring political families (Hindu and Muslim to thicken the plot), hate each other’s guts, till it blurs into love. Dusty small town setting, authentic locales, the guns and gaalis have been done before, but glutted as we are on a decade of NRI settings in Hindi cinema; the rusticity is welcome. The Shakespearean love story gets a Vishal Bhardwaj treatment, very Bollywood avant-garde. Amit Trivedi’s soundtrack layered with dubstep adds to the chutzpah. And then, post-interval, begins Ishaqzaade 2, not the natural conclusion of the first half, but a differently imagined film altogether. From would-be avant-garde to traditional potboiler, complete with a brothel and an old-world prostitute with a heart of gold (even writing that is so dreadfully clichéd, wonder how Gauhar Khan felt enacting it?). The social message tagged on in the end is the part most befuddling. Is this a film about honour killings? Is it about communal rifts? Or is it about entering the Rs 100-crore club, as the director mentioned in a recent interview? Et tu Faisal?
But we won’t give up just yet on the Habib Faisal’s sophomore outing. There is a story in Ishaqzaade — one that struggles to come out, and when it doesn’t, it cheats the audience as much as it cheats its director.
One hopes Parineeti Chopra, the most promising part of the film, does not succumb to the Chitrangada curse (display immense promise before going kaput). It’s heartening to see a young actress so bewitching and natural. She gives Zoya wings to fly. “Zoya madam ki zid ke aage, na tope chale na tamancha,” her father says with affection before going all Hulk on her. It’s entirely believable when Zoya trades her jhumkis for a gun, and drives her jeep like she owns the roads of Almore, the fictional setting of the film. And what a gun she wields. But she crash lands in the second half, from firecracker to damp squib.
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Parineeti Chopra’s Zoya is a heady, impossible creature; hard not to love; but turns from a firecracker into a damp squib, post intermission |
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A note to Arjun Kapoor; the rugged retrosexual look (so Abhishek Bachchan in the early 2000s) is just not done. One can see the advantage, it lets him get away with two expressions hidden behind a thick layer of facial fuzz. Just imagine though, the plight of the viewer, who finds herself nearly cross-eyed in the effort to see what is what on that map of his. Sign up for some acting lessons with Uncle Anil, but leave the pursuit of hirsute to him.
Sunaina Kumar is a Special Correspondent with Tehelka.
sunaina@tehelka.com
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