Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Supriya
Pathak, Anupam Kher and Aditi Sharma
Writer-Director: Pankaj Kapoor
Rating: ****
There is an absolutely devastating moment of
pure drama in this eagerly-awaited far-from-disappointing romance where Shahid
Kapoor, playing one of the most deliciously challenging roles of his career,
espies from a train the lost love of his life, Sonam Kapoor, standing forlorn
in the snow with luggage, like Meryl Streep in “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”
or Manisha Koirala in “Dil Se”, waiting for god knows what! The next train?
Love? Death? Or the next life?
It’s a moment that defines “Mausam”, a film
that has some serious flaws, but finally holds together as a work of
renaissance art, more remarkable, in parts outstanding, for what it attempts
rather than what it finally achieves.
Pankaj Kapoor takes the Muslim-Hindu love
story between a Kashmiri refugee girl and a Punjabi boy through an arching
sweep of history. Every historical trauma that has defined and defiled India
and Indians in the last 30 years props up as a vital image to underline the
love story.
And what “Mausam” finally says is, love
becomes impossible in a civilization that chooses to define itself by violence
rather than peace. Gandhi? He could be just a spectre that never existed in a
world where two young people cannot come together in a clasp of love for the
fear of falling into a terror trap.
We have award-worthy performances in “Mausam”
by the hero who happens to be the director’s son. But that is just a karmic
coincidence, like much of what transpires between the lovers in “Mausam”.
The film goes from one phase in the couple’s
life to another, not quite smoothly but not strenuously either. The transitions
in their estrangement are mapped out in some finely-written scenes where the
couple’s smothered affections for one another are manifested in moments of
sublime beauty.
The ever-brilliant cinematographer Binod
Pradhan captures the couple against breathtaking backdrops in rural Punjab and
Scotland.
“Mausam” is one of the best-looking films in
recent times. The transitions in time and topography are brought about with a
fair degree of inner conviction and outer resplendence.
The synthesis of the lovers’ inner and outer
world is not always stress-free. The couple’s inability to come together
through various tragic and traumatic historical conflicts is depicted in scenes
that range from the rivetting to the mundane.
Visually the film is a feast.
The film’s strong sense of purpose and its
love-defining affiliation to socio-cultural incidents leave little space for
the incidental characters (of whom there are many) to grow in the plot. That,
in a way, is the need of the plot. But you do crave to see more of the lives
around the couple and how these lives and the relationships qualify the love
story at the film’s centre. You want to see the long-lasting friendship between
Aayaat’s Muslim father (Kamalnain Chopra) and the Kashmir Pundit (Anupam Kher).
And there is a plenty of quality of that
sublime stillness in the storytelling - the film’s extraneous correctness hides
much of the film’s intrinsic inconsistencies. Then there is Shahid, standing
tall with a performance that puts him right up there among the finest
contemporary actors.
Shahid takes us through the film’s and his
character’s romantic odyssey, inconsistencies and all. Forget Tom Cruise. In
the Airforce uniform he reminds us of Rajesh Khanna in “Aradhana”. And that’s
the highest compliment any contemporary star can be paid.
The director tries hard to merge Sonam in the
resplendent ambience. Her performance has enchanting echoes of Kareena Kapoor
in “Refugee”. The camera gives her no room to complain. But in the intensely
romantic moments, she looks lost rather than lovelorn.
It’s the other girl, the spirited Punjabi
kudi Rajjo, in Shahid’s life played by Aditi Sharma, who fills up the small
space provided to her character.
