Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Rani Mukherjee, Salman Khan,Zohra Sehgal, Begum Para and othersDirected by: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
It could have been one of the masterpieces in the history of Indian Cinema. It could have woven a never ending magical web of narration. It could have been eulogised as an work of art. But no such things hapenned. Sanjay Leela Bhansali's much hyped film Saawariya failed miserably to achieve the height it was aimed for.It has been almost a year that Saawariya was released, but I had not got the chance to view it earlier. Only last week, I found the time to go through the film, and after the completion, I felt a great sense of loss- loss of integrity, loss of coherence. There were so many aspects of the film, which did not match with each other, that finally it became a bizzarre experience rather than a fulfilling one.The film is an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's short story White Nights. [At least, this time, SLB had the decency to acknowledge the actual writer; he never did it with Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, which was majorly adapted from the very famous Bengali Novel "Na Hanyate" by Maitreyee Devi]. It is a story of four nights, where a young man, the narrator of the story, meets a young girl, who waits over a small bridge for her fiance, who had left her , with a promise to return again after one year. The one year of wait was just completed, and the girl came searching for her love each night. At the end of the fourth night, when the narrator has already fallen in love with her, and the girl has almost lost the hope of finding her love, she suddenly meets him on the road, and they are united. The narrator hero is left back alone with his passion, which dies even before blooming.SLB had a tough job to do. He had to choose an offbeat classic story instead of the run-of-the-mill boy-meets-girl stories. He had to introduce two newcomers, Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor.He had to give them both enough footage to show off their acting, dancing and fighting skills, therefore he put in ample dose of song and dance sequences, also to satiate the Indian movie goers. He had to have extraordinary lavish sets and lights, as we have seen in his earlier films like HDDCS and Devdas. But finally, all the elements mixed together, and ended up being a mess, instead of a fragrant potpourrie.To begin with, there was no need at all to introduce and continue with the characters of Gulabji, the prostitute, played by Rani Mukherjee, and Lilian, the paying guest owner, played by Zohra Sehgal. The story could have very well continued without them , introducing the narrator hero in some different way. There was again, no need of the song sequence with the prostitutes in the very beginning [ the "pari" song, ] and later "dekho chand aya" and "chhail chhabila". They served no purpose in taking the story one step ahead and the film could have easily done away without those songs.The story is set in a magical, unreal city. The mise-en-scène is breathtaking. Islamic Architechture and Gothic structures prevail, reminiscent of the Arabian Nights and European Fairy Tales simultaneously. Diametrically opposite are the long stretches of walls that the camera pans, which are painted lavishly with replicas of Mughal and Buddhist paintings, There is even a huge bust of Budhdha at one corner. Shades of blue, turquise and gold predominates the whole setting. A narrow canal with small bridges over it flows through the buildings. People either walk the cobbled paths, or traverse along the canal in exotic boats, more like shikaras. But there is an abundoned hand-held rickshaw standing in one corner too. Shops have well referred names like "Windermere", "Symphone Records", "Sheikh Omar's" .You cannot see the sky, there are no plants, no animals or birds or hints of any other living beings, except the various characters dressed primarily in black, blue or white. The only shot that gives a birds eye view of the city is the one that Sakina [Sonam Kapoor] and Raj [Ranbir Kapoor] sees a couple of times from the clock tower - which is a painting in blue and white, straight out of the fairy tale books we used to get in our childhood , published from the former USSR.Such poetic and exotic a city would necessarily rouse the spectator with an imagination of equally eloquent happenings. But here is where the viewers faces some sense of outre. The characters are a mix of Hindu, Muslim and Christian, they sing "Om Jai Jagadish Hare" and celebrates Eid too, Lilian's dead son worked in the army , and just when you are engrossed enough to believe this to be a fairy tale or an exotic period film, Sakina and her family goes along with Imaan to watch "Mughal-E-Azam", sitting on shikaras on the canal !! - that was perhaps the most unconvincing anomaly. Raj is a bar singer, and one of the nights, they party out at the bar in typically modern fashion. At one point of time, Raj uses a salutation " Hey Baby...." to call back Sakina, who resembles more a character straight out of the Arabian Night stories, with her flowing black gowns and veils , unkempt beauty and her profession of carpet weaver, while Raj's costumes and characterisation will instinctively remind you of Raj Kapoor's character from Sree 420, including the the Russian cap!!It is this mismatch of real and magical, time and space , characters and language that has lead the film to become a failure, inspite of great set design, good acting, and not so bad music. Performance wise, Ranbir and Sonam has done a good job. The rest are veteran actors and performed there parts with expected confidence.SLB could have chosen a much simpler story for launching the kids. And he could have dealt with this story quite differently. A director who can make a starkly beautiful film as "Black", could have created magic, if he treated the same story in some other way. Saawariya aimed to be extravagant and magnanimous, but could not.