Not Bad, Mani Moshai!
Yuva
Director: Mani Ratnam
Actors: Abhishek Bachchan, Ajay Devgan
By Mayank Shekhar
The elements of a reputable great whilst he is still alive often get taken for granted. And if you’re consistently great for two decades, that is ‘Mani Ratnam’, the audience may begin to expect nutritional nourishment from your films. Rarely does cinema bear gastronomic powers, so whatever Ratnam offers then is likely to be a disappointment. Which Yuva is.
Which for the same reasons, Dil Se (1998) was, though the film’s DVD inspired one of world cinema’s most touching films, Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark (2000). That Ratnam’s DVD collection has been unjustly flogged for having “plagiarised” a narrative device from the Spanish film Amorres Perros in Yuva’s case seems odd then.
Undoubtedly, this film is no masterpiece. But I must report that of all its obvious follies, the thankfully missing one is that it still retains every element that you watch a Mani Ratnam film for. Foremost, his instantly appealing formula to use familial drama (Nayakan, Dalapathi, Anjali, Kannathil Muthamittal), or simple love stories (Roja, Bombay, Dil Se) unbelievably picturised on Indian locales, to tell a larger tale.
Then, stories hinged on moments you could freeze frames for. Rani Mukherjee’s rice-fed-mouthed laugh, a quickly stolen train compartment kiss (Ajay Devgan-Esha Deol), first phone chatter between hip young strangers (Vivek Oberoi-Kareena Kapoor)… All ‘unforgettables’ here, even if the film may be relatively forgettable. Just as, say, the confrontation scene around the All India Radio’s moving studio-door emitting partial light in Dil Se (Shah Rukh Khan- Manisha Koirala).
Another aspect to note in a Ratnam retrospective are his women — in most of his films, astonishingly beautiful, yet real — so much more alluring than Yash Chopra’s chiffon/satin clad unattainable, unapproachable temptresses. And to add to the merits, even the mockironic, gritty Hindi dialogues here emanate characteristic flavour of the three separate films that Yuva actually is.
If there’s one silver-lining that often eludes this cineaste from Chennai, it’s a popular affliction among several Indian talents: it’s called ‘the end’ (or the process of it). That he had three conflicts to resolve in this screenplay sounded like the beginning of the end of the film to me anyway.
The first conflict concerns Oberoi’s happy-go-lucky, escapist character. Wavering in his career goals, he typifies a confused, yet confident youth. Which is quite in contrast to Devgan’s politically conscious and conscientious student leader, Michael, who galvanizes a group to romp home at Bengal’s state elections. Which again is quite in contrast to Abhishek Bachchan’s Lallan Singh, the gruffly illiterate goon who vitiates the spirit of campus politics (a huge problem in North Indian universities, tackled better in Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Haasil).
Any two particular strings pitted against each other in this intertwined plot would have worked. Given greater seriousness and screen time, the film’s essential point would have seemed less credulous and unduly simplified. It is strange that Ratnam did not delve into intricacies of journalism as a profession through Arvind Swamy’s lead character in Bombay (1995), for it would have supposedly deviated from the focus of his screenplay. And then he decides to play here with three divergent storylines, three disparate love lullabies to arrive at an immediate destination, through an obviously gimmicky and circuitous route.
This is not to mention yet the eye-catching flaws in the film — ones worth an average script doctor’s cure. By the end of it all, you’re not sure which of the two is Bachchan’s Lallan: A good-hearted man gone wrong as the initial scenes insinuate, or the absolutely deranged, trigger-happy psycho who later kills his brother, his best friend, abandons his Bengali wife (to go alone to his own Bihar/UP homeland).
Why aren’t the Presidency College student-politicians young PhD students, or assistant professors? At least then you can justify a desperately older looking Devgan in college, or his classroom colleagues appearing in Assembly elections where candidates are supposed to be over 25.
Yet, I think, Ratnam’s ‘Bollywood’ film (Hindi version) must be judged within the context of its brainless brotherhood that creates brouhaha even among critics. It must be judged for what it is, than unfairly only for what it could’ve been. The sum of absolutely zingy and fulsome individual parts is vastly superior to the whole here. View this when you can look beyond the glaring glitches and you will know what I mean. This is typically ‘Ratnam’ and may well be his second most underrated work. Coincidentally, the first one was also in Hindi, dismissed with almost the same hurried felicity.
