I watched Saawariya!

The biggest problem with Saawariya-the movie is the cardinal sin any film maker can make-- the timing of its release.If you are not a film critic who gets his paisa for the Sunday review or one who thinks,since its a Bhansali movie, i would love it anyways,there is no reason as to why one should go to the movie with a Diwali hain ,movie chalo mood! With Shahrukh Khan romancing the six feet sexy siren with daughterly genuineness janam after janam on the next screen who would want to spend three hours and a hundred fifty bucks on a world awash with blue- green light, shot in a city which consists of only two lovers and a few prostitutes,with sequences of uncoreographed pelvic thrusts of the naked hero brushing soft cotton towels against tender bottoms , with people jumping idhar udhar crossing symmetric potholes in gay abandon, and shot in a set which is so timeless, seasonless, dayless and of course lifeless!!

The movie, which is loosely based on the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1848 story,"White Nights" and is the first Sony venture into Bollywood,opens up with a scene with a where-on-earth-is-this-city strung with a Rani Mukherjee narration about a rockstar farishta, her Saawariya. No brownie points for guessing him to be the new kid on the block played by the Raj Kapoor synthetic look alike,his very own grandson,Ranbir Kapoor!Uncannily named Raj in the movie as well, Ranbir Kapoor plays the ichak daana bichak daana innocent guy who goes into a bar asking for milk (Kareena Kapoor is not the only dumbass amongst the Kapoors i swear!) wherein he stumbles upon Gulab, the overpowering,melodramatic prostitute played by Rani Mukherjee,(perfecting her mega pimp act after the recently released Laga Chunari Mein Daag) who drinks angrezi sharaab, intersperses her words with fake plural goofups, and who recycles the tawaifo ka bhi dil hota hain feeling of Chandramukhi quite frequently quite irrelevantly, in short, the usual Bhansali prostitute!

You have hardly popped your tenth popcorn and up comes the title track of the movie "Saawariya". Its Nice, but not necessary. Hardly is it over when it plays another forgetfull song with a pack of prostitutes and the hero who sleeps on a ball coz he doesnt have a pillow, believe it?A melange of activities follow next.He plays Peter Pan to the whole neighbourhood of Gulab and her pimp friends, an old martinet played by Zohra Sehgal, Raj himself and, well, the chaataawaali heroine, Sakina played by the demure Sonam Kapoor .Prince meets princess over a four feet five inches bridge built over a five feet long canal meant only for the transportation of unspoken feelings by dumb lovers.Russian crap has it that Raj discovers soon ki Sakeena loves some stranger by the name Imaan, a really forgettable role in the movie played by a kohl eyed Salman Khan.Fish!!(I wouldnt have been amazed if he had declined this role for even a Rupa Baniyaan ad!) And night after night( were there any days in the movie btw?)repeated scenes of Sakeena waiting for Imaan to return while Raj, playing the asexual good friend cum second man in her life wanting Imaan not to return makes the audience more desperate than the both of them for this wait to end!! In the end, Imaan comes,reaps his no investment dividends and Raj loses both the women in his life.The end. Name casting. And finissss..

So this was it. Or , was this it??? I think if you ask me now, Did i like the movie. I would say with a silent purr, Probably Yess! And here it is why..

First, when you go to watch a Sanjay Leela Bhansali movie, you go to watch the flamboyant director in action.Just look at it man what he has made the new kids act like. Ranbir has such flashes of brilliance that shook the ground beneath my feet at times. His uncoreographed madness movements, his expressions that have been crafted especially in the last scenes to show the dilemma in this character reminds one of the famous Raj Kapoor and his frames! Sonam Kapoor again is such a fresh breath of air in the movie. She is meant to look demure, virginal and that she does it to neat perfection.A little work could have been done on her speech but think of it, she is just a debutante and remember what debutantes once used to be, the moustached eyebrowed Karishma Kapoor or the deep freezed modellish Aishwarya of yesteryears? So chill.Rani Mukherjee and Zohra Sehgal to me are the acting pinnacles of this movie while Salman Khan better be unspoken about.(All that i can say is the topless expose king might be all jealous about the bottomless Ranbir Kapoor naa?:)

Coming to the ideological centre of the movie , though it looked like a clone treatment of Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam with an opposite ending , I liked the concept of love as portrayed through the character of Raj, the innocent maverick lover who cares not for yesterdays and tomorrows, but just the full fructification of each moment spent with his love because somewhere in his mind he knows,his story wont last a lifetime , it just spans across moments to moments. Just single ones. . Each moment carries with it an urgency to bare his soul for the last possible time perhaps. Sakina's character is so very selfish if you look at it that way..She loved Imaan, yet she started loving Raj.She waited for Imaan, yet she almost gave up near the end. What are feelings if you give them up in the rough weather?What if Imaan hadnt come? Wouldnt she had gone ahead with Raj and lived happily ever after? Either ways she knew to complete her own story.A chaalu sweet woman she is.Makes me wonder whether her life actually had a story or was it always a mere compromise with the nearest best thing available at hand?The character of Sakina is one of the most coyly treated treacherous characters of recent Hindi cinema.Its she, and not Gulab who emerges out as the actual pimp in the story.

And it is with such a pint of chagrin and a soulful instrumental symphony at the backdrop that the movie was coming to an end. As the cherubic Raj traces his way back in memories' corridors, through the same symmetric potholes,alone this time ,in the same flowery frescos of the city, Gulab ends the story as mesmerisingly in her voice as Dostoyevsky does in his actual tale of love and longing when his protagonist looks up to the raining sky and asks the clouds above,

"Isnt such a moment sufficient for the whole of a man's life?"