All soul, no spine
Film: Rockstar
Director: Imtiaz Ali
Starring: Ranbir Kapoor, Nargis Fakhri
Rating:
It begins on an electric note, the big, bad rockstar escaping from a fight, hair blowing in the wind as he races through the streets of Rome (or is it Prague?) to jump straight into a crowd waiting for him. From then on, it goes downhill, and spectacularly so.
Imtiaz Ali has discovered his baroque side and it is a terrible thing to behold. Everything is in excess. Ranbir Kapoor as Janardhan Jakhar, the naive Haryanvi boy trying to flirt with Heer Kaul, the elusive St Stephen's beauty, is too much of a buffoon, and as Jordan, the angry rocker, he's a little too raging bull. Newbie Nargis Fakhri is painful to watch, her mobile mouth overpowering her face, never quite pulling off the "neat and clean" stunner who wants to get her hands and feet dirty with a bit of rough and absolutely cringingly bad as the unhappy wife whose life is slowly slipping away.
And whenever I see Shernaz Patel in any movie these days, it is an automatic Sanjay Leela Bhansali alert: I know there's trouble ahead and it will involve several medical/legal issues which she will try explaining to the audience ("the blood count is improving" or "it's a miracle") but fail.
Ali has crafted the film as one long song, and nowhere in recent times has the music integrated so well with what he is trying to say. Whether it is Kun Faaya Kunwhere Janardhan discovers the power of music, or the gorgeous jugalbandi between Shammi Kapoor on shehnai and Ranbir on guitar where you can see two different kinds of talent on display--one natural, almost animal-like, another refined, spiritually-inclined--AR Rahman's music is the soul of the film. What is missing is the spine, leaving just a jelly in place.
Ali's trademark obsessions are on full display -- travel for one. Jakhar discovers Heer and Kashmir on a motorcycle, he makes his grandest rockstar-like gestures coming out of a car or in a van (the only time the sultry Aditi Rao Hydari is allowed to burn on screen, mocking Ranbir's studly image). And spirited girls -- few filmmakers have plumbed the hidden spirit of good girls as he has -- whether it was Geet in Jab We Met or Meera in Love Aaj Kal. Girls who do as their families tell them but whose individuality is strong and fierce. But Nargis Fakhri is an utter failure at capturing that essence -- as Heer she was to be both wilful and wild, enigmatic and tragic. Try as you will to like her, her mouth gets in the way. She is the reason for Jordan's existence, at least as Ali must have envisaged it on paper, but here she is just an irritating presence, who just happens to look good in phirans and Kashmiri shawls, which is the extent of research Ali has done on Kashmir, peopling a Kashmiri Pandit wedding with scores of Muslim relatives.
There are moments of great beauty in the film. The heart-stopping duet between Shammi Kapoor and Ranbir; the Kun Faaya Kun song in the Nizamuddin dargah; the hilarious massage scene involving a leopard print underwear-clad music baron, Piyush Mishra; or even Ranbir dancing in a trance at a nightclub, transported into another world. But instead of taking the audience along on his journey of pain, the audience is increasingly frustrated. Too many things are left unexplained. How does Janardhan become such a symbol of rage -- does it really just take a single act of breaking in and entering a foreign country to make him the emblem of Free Tibet, angry Kashmiris and angry Khalistanis? Why does Heer not just run away with him?
I think one problem with the film is that it is about a grand passion, and mainstream Hindi cinema is not equipped to show a grand romance except in the most inane form. So while the young couple kiss each other with great gusto, they can't do much more. Ali's journey into the recesses of an artist's soul remains superficial, amplified only by its tokens -- aphiran in Kashmir, a group of gypsies in Prague, a Haryanvi haveli for Delhi's semi-urbanites. Planes, cars, motorcycles. Take whatever mode of transport you will, you come right back to the single fact: this is a film that lacks discipline. All the Rumi quotations of the world cannot provide either.
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