Director: Imtiaz Ali
Rating: **1/2
This is not a film telling us a trite, oft repeated story of longings and ecstasies of a man and woman in love. This unique love story talks of self love. It jolts you out of your safe cocoon of social conditioning to pointedly ask you if you love yourself enough to be able to throw up the rules of society and live the way you really want to.
Tara Maheshwari (Deepika Padukone) loses her passport in Corsica, France and a stranger (Ved, played by Ranbir Kapoor) comes to her rescue. He doesn't reveal his identity to her, but instead introduces her to his mad, spontaneous self. Absolutely smitten by this goofy, endearing guy, Tara continues missing him even after years. And one day, she manages to track him down. But Tara is in for a surprise. This time around, she is introduced to the 'real' Ved, who is a mediocre corporate slave, a creature of habit, who keeps his boss happy with insincere flattery.
This must not have been an easy script for Imtiaz Ali to write, though taking the journey within is a constant theme in most of his earlier films. Even though Ali's heroes have always had their souls trapped behind a melancholic mask, Ved seems to be the darkest of them all. While the heroes of Ali's other films had dramatic situations leading to self discovery, Ved's character has the biggest struggle of all - his fight with himself. It takes a special effort for him to even realise that he's a special species blessed with the gift of imagination, unlike what the society and his parents want him to believe.
Ranbir, undoubtedly one of the best actors we have today, is brilliant as the vulnerable, unsure Ved. That one scene where Ved confronts Tara and is torn between the temptation to fly into a rage and be the polite gentleman that the world expects him to be, shows what he's capable of. Deepika looks gorgeous and is admirably effortless as Tara.
Ali is lucky to have had people behind the scenes who could grasp the sensibility of his film and contribute to the whole experience, be it Ravi Varman's magical cinematography or AR Rahman's music coming together with Irshad Kamil's soulful lyrics.
What didn't work was that the film was unnecessarily stretched to two and half hours. Besides, there were one or two logic-defying, difficult-to-relate-to scenes which seemed forcibly introduced to take the story forward.
But watch this one. You might come out loving yourself a little more than you do.
