Review: Lootera.

Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera could have been alternatively titled Opposites Attract, because while Hindi films often tell stories of two dissimilar people falling in love, seldom have a couple been as different from each other as Varun (Ranveer Singh) and Pakhi (Sonakshi Sinha). Pakhi, as Varun acidly reminds her in a post-interval scene, has had a privileged life; the daughter of a zamindar in rural Bengal, she has been brought up in luxury and comfort, sheltered from the unpleasant realities of the world (it’s ironical that Varun should tell her this, though, because ultimately, it’s he who exposes Pakhi to those unpleasant realities). Varun, on the other hand, is an orphan who must fend for himself. Pakhi has known parental love. Her father (Barun Chanda) considers her to be the vessel for his life-force, like those magical birds in folk tales who contain within them the life-force of the mighty kings. The closest that Varun has to a father, however, is Vajpai aka Chacha-ji (Arif Zakaria), who is, to put it mildly, more Fagin than Atticus Finch. Pakhi has literary and artistic gifts. Like Rohan, the boy hero of Motwane’s previous film Udaan, she wants to be a writer, and can paint beautifully. Varun, meanwhile, can’t even draw a leaf without messing up the canvas. Pakhi is the sort who wears the heart on the sleeve: when her affections are spurned, she screams, in front of complete strangers, asking the man she loves why he is doing this to her. (Indeed, she asks him directly if he loves her, adding, pleadingly, that he say yes, if only to placate her. Her words—“Mera dil rakhne ke liye toh haan bol dijiye”—sound like a sadder version of “Paal bhar ke liye koi hum-e pyaar kar le, jhoota hi sahi”, the lines with which Dev Anand serenaded Hema Malini in Johny Mera Naam. Anand and his films, in fact, are invoked repeatedly). Varun, in sharp contrast, is reserved and aloof. Most significantly, Pakhi, occasional instances of bratty behaviour notwithstanding, is pure, innocent, almost child-like. Varun, as is revealed eventually, is anything but.

And yet, they fall for one another, and one of the joys of watching Lootera is the grace and conviction with which this romance is chronicled. The proceedings are gentle and mellow at first—though the fact that Varun and Pakhi’s first meeting takes place via a road accident is a grim hint of the troubles to come—with shy glances, guarded yet tender conversations, and painting lessons masking the passion that smoulders beneath. In particular, two scenes from this portion of the film stayed with me. The first one is where Pakhi sneaks into Varun’s room, and ends up sitting on his bed, wearing his hat and his jacket, with one of his cigarettes propped into her mouth. This isn't unlike a child trying on an elder's clothes out of curiosity and interest, but you sense that Pakhi's interest here isn't entirely a child's; if anything, the arrival of this attractive young man has brought out the adult, amorous side to her, infusing her somewhat lonely, adrift existence with the kind of fascination and feelings she hasn't experienced before. Putting on Varun's clothes, then, is perhaps her way of experiencing the touch of the man who has already touched a chord in her. The other scene comes a little later, when she and Varun are resting by a pond and talking about their dreams. It’s here, finally, that we discover something that they have in common: a love of solitude, nature, and, despite Varun’s inability at it, art. Pakhi says she wants to live in the Dalhousie residence her father owns, and be lost in writing books while it snows outside, to which Varun replies that his dream is to visit a similarly icy, uninhabited location in the Himalayas and paint his “masterpiece” (this, by the way, is the first indication that the film is based in part on O. Henry’s The Last Leaf). The mood in this sequence is romantic in a remarkably unfussy, understated manner. And it’s entirely fitting that the first true instance of physical affection between Varun and Pakhi occurs soon afterwards, when he has to inject her with the drug she needs when she has one of her asthma attacks, and then draws her into his arms and holds her to his chest—they came close when they articulated the similarity of their aspirations, and now, standing on that foundation, they come closer. This gradual progress of their love, the poetic depiction of romance as a beacon of beauty and solace in an otherwise turbulent world, and the carefully mounted, painterly frames within which it all unfolds, reflect a distinctly old-school style of filmmaking, and this is complemented by the dialogues and the music. The exquisitely tasteful exchanges penned by Anurag Kashyap hark back to an older manner of speech, and Amit Trivedi’s tunes, especially the wonderful Sanwar Loon, could be out of a film from the 1950s, the decade which Lootera is set in. Even the humour is of a decidedly genteel kind, eliciting chuckles rather than belly laughs.

For all its old world charms, however, the film doesn’t forget to take note that that world is fast changing. The candles and oil lamps are giving way to electric lights; emulation of English tastes is being replaced by the emulation of desi screen idols like Dev Anand; and the zamindari system, propped up by the British, is on its way to abolition in the newly independent country. Pakhi’s father, and to a lesser extent Pakhi herself, are first wilfully indifferent to, then baffled, and finally angered by the changes—the father, for instance, rages at a man who has come to take away all the antique pieces he owns, only to be told, coolly, that these items, once stolen from Indians by the East India Company and gifted to the zamindars, are now the property of the Indian government and destined to be put up in museums for the masses to see, and any attempt on the part of the zamindar to stop this governmental procedure would result in his arrest. The zamindar is crushed, not only by the loss of heirlooms, but also by the realization that he is no longer the most powerful person even in his own village. Like many others of his class, he had imagined that the massive changes visited upon our nation after 1947 shall somehow leave him unaffected; not even the warnings from his munib and newspaper reports about the passage of laws that nullify feudalism could make him forgo the illusion that things would stay the way they are. When, however, the whirlwind of change arrives on his doorstep, he has no choice but to stop living in denial and concede that his glory days are over, that he is now a curio like those ancestral belongings of his. The idealized love of Pakhi for Varun, the film seems to be saying, is as much a relic of the past as her father’s pride, and bound to be scarred and trampled upon in the new India. Varun, for his part, starts out as a denizen of the new world, as well as the representative of a newly emergent class that cares little for old hierarchies and gets what it wants through any means necessary. His love for Pakhi, however, leaves him a misfit in his own milieu. That milieu, Varun is ominously reminded, doesn’t allow for love and caring. But he has fallen in love; so, despite going through with what he had arrived in Pakhi’s village to do in the first place—which results in a shatteringly tragic pre-interval stretch—Varun can no longer be the same person. His action hurts himself as much as it does others. This all-encompassing nature of the tragedy is evident in the second half, where the warm glow of the interiors of the zamindar’s mansion and the greenery of the surroundings are replaced by a bleak, washed-out colour palette and the wintry setting of the aforementioned Dalhousie bungalow where Pakhi has retired to, indicating that all joys in the characters’ lives have been drained, leaving behind only shells of their former selves. That idea is underscored by Pakhi being diagnosed with tuberculosis, by the re-appearance of Varun, now even more brooding and withdrawn than he used to be, and of course, by the infusion of violence in the story, manifested most memorably in a fight and shootout that culminates in the death of a person whom the killer didn't mean to kill. The violence pervades the relationship between Pakhi and Varun as well, once they come face to face again: screamed accusations, throwing things around, physical wrangling, and pointing of guns abound.

Remarkably, in the midst of it all, we also witness redemption. Varun knows, even admits, that he threw away the one chance he had to live a good life when he abandoned Pakhi, and while he knows that he is now never going to live that life—not least because law is hot on his trails, in the form of a cop named, in one more nod to Dev Anand’s films, K.N. Singh (the habitually excellent Adil Hussain)—he decides to make amends for what he did. Once he starts doing so, even the violence begins to have to it a redemptive touch: when he pins Pakhi to a door, slamming her against it with his back, it’s not because he wants to hurt her, but because he wants to give her an injection, which she refuses to let him do. He refuses to leave Pakhi inspite of the threat from Singh, his own injuries, and Pakhi’s fatalistic acceptance that her days are numbered. The trajectory of Baazi, the Anand film referenced early on, is thus evoked: both are about a crook who achieves salvation through his love for a woman. Pakhi, meanwhile, is conflicted. She tells Singh that she wants to forget Varun rather than take revenge on him, but when he re-enters her life, she does something that’s driven entirely by vengeance, and then, as that act of hers puts him in danger, she stands up to Singh and protects Varun in one of the best scenes in the film. She isn’t, can’t be, so indifferent to Varun as to forget him, and whatever she does—be it quarreling with him, planning to harm him, or protecting him—is the result of the intense feelings she still has for the man. Watching the two of them work out their problems, their anger, within the closed quarters of a house which they can’t leave (Pakhi because of her health, Varun because is he is being pursued by the police), is fascinating.

Things begin to go awry only when Motwane starts drawing too much upon The Last Leaf, making Pakhi prophesize aloud that her death shall come when tree outside her window becomes leafless, and, even more drearily, by showcasing what Varun does to re-ignite in Pakhi the will to live in a most overt fashion, through the use of slow motion and loud music. It’s so out of sync with the subtlety and restraint in the rest of the film that you wonder what took over Motwane in the final lap. For a film so packed with touching moments, the climax, which should have had the biggest impact of all, is curiously mishandled. Henry’s tale had the same stuff, true, but maybe the visual adaptation of it should have travelled a different route. His stories hinge, by nature, on a sensationalized twist at the end, and while that sensationalism may work fine on the page, it’s not appropriate for a film of this sort.

If those last scenes grate, though, it’s because everything else that comes before is so good. There’s a lot to love in Lootera, not the least of which are the performances of the leads. Ranveer’s muted act in the first half is something of a dampener, and makes you wonder if he should have added to his performance a dash of the charm that Vikrant Massey, who plays his friend, demonstrates, but his fierce, poignant intensity in the second half washes away all quibbles. It isn’t very often that we see our leading men play anti-heroes, and rarer still is seeing an actor as young as Ranveer play one with such aplomb, with a marvellously precise blend of anger and contrite, tormented humanity.

Sonakshi, for her part, finally makes the much-needed transition from eye-candy to actress. We caught glimpses of this actress in Dabangg; with a well-written role, defined in equal parts by spunk and softness, at her disposal, she came up with a fairly enjoyable performance. Her subsequent films saw her play increasingly thankless parts, ones which make women mere accessories to the male stars, but even in those, she had a radiant presence—courtesy those large, expressive eyes and a smile that seems to enhance the very wattage of frames—which hinted at potential yet to be tapped into. Here, handed best role of her career, Sonakshi sinks her teeth into it like a lioness devouring flesh after prolonged starvation. When she moves around in a vintage car in expensive saris, she effortlessly exudes the aura of wealth and aristocracy; when she is seized by coughing fits, the guttural breaths she draws undercut that aura with a palpable sense of vulnerability. The disarming sweetness as she switches a newly bought light bulb on and off, the sly naughtiness in the scenes with her father, the gradual realization that she is in love, and the desperation that she may be losing the man she is in love with—it all registers superlatively well. Later, with dark spots under her eyes and deathly pale skin, she reminds us of no less a performer than Jaya Bachchan in Mili (indeed, Lootera does seem to owe something to the Hrishikesh Mukherjee film, for that too is the love story of an ailing woman and a stranger with a dark side). Locating reserves of strength and a vast array of emotions in a crumbling physique, Sonakshi turns Pakhi into one of the most affecting characters I have seen in our films, a woman in whom all who have loved and suffered can see a bit of themselves. Ah, the wonders that can happen when a gifted director is at the helms. I exited Lootera with that most desirable of feelings--a heartache I did not wish would go away.