MOVIE REVIEW
Tamasha Movie Review
A
n off-the beaten track love story that does not go
far enough with its surprises, Imtiaz Ali’s Tamasha is a film that flatters to deceive. It rolls along
smoothly, but so facile are its placid twists and pat resolutions that they cause nary an emotional ripple. It is a
pretty film, thanks to cinematographer S Ravi Varman’s
lighting and camerawork.Every frame is picture-perfect.
And Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone are on top
of their game.Added to that are an intelligently elliptical narrative, imaginative use of songs and occasional
bright spots. Yet, Tamasha is disappointingly inert and
unexciting. Its overly simplistic fairy-tale construct – creative and free-spirited son versus pragmatic and domineering dad – is given a gender-reversal spin. Tamasha isn’t the story of a Prince Charming who rides in
on a handsome steed to rescue a beautiful princess
in captivity in a towering turret. Instead, the yarn that
it spins is about a gifted young man weighed down by
the pressures of expectation.His dreams of being a storyteller are cruelly crushed and he is pushed by his father (Jawed Sheikh) into the domain of mathematics and
management.A mystery woman emerges from nowhere
to help the hopelessly trapped dreamer to escape from
the morass of a life he did not choose. The supporting
characters stay in the background, making Tamasha essentially a two-hander that is well served by the lead pair
and their crackling chemistry. But while the male protagonist has a clear back story, the heroine doesn’t. As a
result, this tale about the therapeutic power of love and
the magic of dreams seems rather lopsided. The tussle
between a man and his mask might have been far more
engaging had Tamasha focused more on the layers of a
life gone awry, instead of staying rooted to just one facet
of it. Fleeing the drudgery of his corporate life, the boy
(Ranbir Kapoor) meets the girl (Deepika Padukone) in
faraway Corsica. The girl has been drawn to the French
territory by her fondness for the comic book Asterix in
Corsica. However, why the boy has chosen this exotic
location for a getaway isn’t clear. He is in the middle of
reading Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, which of course reflects the current state of his mind: all jumbled up. To
make the most of the freedom that complete anonymity
gives them, the duo playacts with each other, hiding their
identities and backgrounds from each other.On day one,
they make two promises to themselves: no jumping into
bed and no speaking the truth. He introduces himself as
Don on the trail of bad guy Teja. She responds by calling
herself Mona Darling. Movie allusions pop up all through
their first encounter, leading to a long passage in which
Don turns into an Interpol agent who talks and walks like
Dev Anand. It isn’t until much later in the film that the audience discovers who they really are – Ved Sahni from
Shimla and Tara Maheshwari from Kolkata. A week of
aimless fun and frolic in the Corsican sun – during which
the young couple keep their hands off each other – ends
soon enough. The lady, who is some sort of a tea company official, is summoned back to India and she leaves
after a quick parting kiss.As a group of singers belts out
Heer Toh Badi Sad Hai, Tara lands in Kolkata.Before the
song ends, four years have elapsed and she heads to
Delhi in search of the man who had swept her off her
feet. In Delhi, she is in for a huge setback. The guy she
meets is a pale shadow of the footloose and fun-loving
Corsican tourist. Ved Vardhan Sahni, product manager
in a telecom firm, is staid, chivalrous and accustomed
to an unchanging regimen. He is a typical average man
happy to achieve his targets. The rest of the story revolves around a rejection of an engagement ring. It triggers heartburns and unseemly outbursts before culminating in in