Connecting aaj and kal with aajkal (Love Aaj Kal)
31/07/09 22:34 Filed in: Filmi
The title of Imtiaz Ali’s latest film, Love
Aaj Kal, highlights 3 stages in time:
अाज
(aaj - today), कल (kal -
tomorrow) and अाजकल (aajkal -
these days). His story weaves the three together
so that their relation to each other shows them
as both distinct and interrelated.
Trains and their metaphor of spiritual movement loomed large in his earlier Jab We Met. The train here suggests the parallel tracks connecting Harleen Kaur and Veer Singh in India 40 years ago, and Meera Pandit and Jai Vardhan Singh in London and India, present day. Travel and journeys here are both outside by tube, train, car, bike and plane, and inside the mind and heart.
As the story opens we meet Meera (Deepika Padukone) and Jai, who live in London and have been a couple for two years. Underscoring just how modern and unattached to conventions of the past they are, we see them kiss on the lips within 12 minutes into the film, which is sill a rare occurrence in Hindi films. They like each other, a lot, and they still decide that since Meera will soon move to India and Jay’s angling for a San Francisco career, the best thing to do is break up. Who needs the tedium of a LDR, with its inevitable emotional and physical distance? They’ll be in touch, but the logical thing is no commitments, right?
They throw a breakup party, and to show how sure they are about their plan, Meera gives her blessing as a guest asks Jai if he’s now single. The friends (perhaps standing in for the audience) are confused about how to react, but it seems like Meera and Jai are happy with this “logical” ending.
But after Meera leaves at the end of the night Jai’s not looking so good, and Veer, who owns the pub hosting the party, steps in and asks a few too many personal questions about what’s going on. Jai, initially bristling at the intrusion, opens up and Veer decides that Jai reminds him of when he was younger. As Veer tells the story of his own pursuit of true love, the setting switches between the two couples in 1965 and 2009, who do have things in common. It’s also clear that Veer’s storytelling motive is to give Jai relationship advice he may or may not be ready to hear.
Love Aaj Kal suggests that love aaj has lessons to learn from love kal if you’re willing to pay attention. A puzzled Veer could be relating countless film plots about separated lovers as he asks why they chose to break up: “Was the family against it? Didn’t you like her?” He doesn’t buy the idea of logical decisions, complaining that “your lives are filled by science.” For Veer, emotion is missing from modern relationships; people hook up casually aaj kal, sleeping together before they know each other’s names.
Jai, on the other hand, laughs at the seriousness when the young Veer pledged that his love for Harleen was eternal. He asks the older man how he could follow her on intuition when he hadn’t even properly met or talked with her. It’s like Jai hasn’t seen any Hindi films ever – isn’t instant and fated love the stock in trade of so many plots from the past?
The disjunct between their points of view is summed up in the difference between Veer’s old-school Dilli or Jai’s Delhi. Jai asserts that he’s going to have many girlfriends from here on out. Veer counters that “You only fall in love once.”
Although they put up brave and “mature” fronts to each other when they talk or write (and they seem to update each other constantly), they’re still entwined, and also committed to this breakup, at least on paper. Actually, even paper would be too much commitment for these two. Jai has to remind himself that these decisions are right because they’re logical, even as he devolves onscreen after reaching what was his ultimate dream job in San Francisco.
We know they’re kidding themselves, even before the interval, and so does Veer (in his older avatar played by Rishi Kapoor). Like the grandfather in Jab We Met, he knows the inside of the couple’s hearts long before they do.
I also wrote a LAK film review here:
http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f080309021944
Awesome blogger Beth Loves Bollywood has a fantastic write-up as well:
http://bethlovesbollywood.blogspot.com/2009/08/love-aaj-kal.html
Trains and their metaphor of spiritual movement loomed large in his earlier Jab We Met. The train here suggests the parallel tracks connecting Harleen Kaur and Veer Singh in India 40 years ago, and Meera Pandit and Jai Vardhan Singh in London and India, present day. Travel and journeys here are both outside by tube, train, car, bike and plane, and inside the mind and heart.
As the story opens we meet Meera (Deepika Padukone) and Jai, who live in London and have been a couple for two years. Underscoring just how modern and unattached to conventions of the past they are, we see them kiss on the lips within 12 minutes into the film, which is sill a rare occurrence in Hindi films. They like each other, a lot, and they still decide that since Meera will soon move to India and Jay’s angling for a San Francisco career, the best thing to do is break up. Who needs the tedium of a LDR, with its inevitable emotional and physical distance? They’ll be in touch, but the logical thing is no commitments, right?
They throw a breakup party, and to show how sure they are about their plan, Meera gives her blessing as a guest asks Jai if he’s now single. The friends (perhaps standing in for the audience) are confused about how to react, but it seems like Meera and Jai are happy with this “logical” ending.
But after Meera leaves at the end of the night Jai’s not looking so good, and Veer, who owns the pub hosting the party, steps in and asks a few too many personal questions about what’s going on. Jai, initially bristling at the intrusion, opens up and Veer decides that Jai reminds him of when he was younger. As Veer tells the story of his own pursuit of true love, the setting switches between the two couples in 1965 and 2009, who do have things in common. It’s also clear that Veer’s storytelling motive is to give Jai relationship advice he may or may not be ready to hear.
Love Aaj Kal suggests that love aaj has lessons to learn from love kal if you’re willing to pay attention. A puzzled Veer could be relating countless film plots about separated lovers as he asks why they chose to break up: “Was the family against it? Didn’t you like her?” He doesn’t buy the idea of logical decisions, complaining that “your lives are filled by science.” For Veer, emotion is missing from modern relationships; people hook up casually aaj kal, sleeping together before they know each other’s names.
Jai, on the other hand, laughs at the seriousness when the young Veer pledged that his love for Harleen was eternal. He asks the older man how he could follow her on intuition when he hadn’t even properly met or talked with her. It’s like Jai hasn’t seen any Hindi films ever – isn’t instant and fated love the stock in trade of so many plots from the past?
The disjunct between their points of view is summed up in the difference between Veer’s old-school Dilli or Jai’s Delhi. Jai asserts that he’s going to have many girlfriends from here on out. Veer counters that “You only fall in love once.”
Although they put up brave and “mature” fronts to each other when they talk or write (and they seem to update each other constantly), they’re still entwined, and also committed to this breakup, at least on paper. Actually, even paper would be too much commitment for these two. Jai has to remind himself that these decisions are right because they’re logical, even as he devolves onscreen after reaching what was his ultimate dream job in San Francisco.
We know they’re kidding themselves, even before the interval, and so does Veer (in his older avatar played by Rishi Kapoor). Like the grandfather in Jab We Met, he knows the inside of the couple’s hearts long before they do.
I also wrote a LAK film review here:
http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f080309021944
Awesome blogger Beth Loves Bollywood has a fantastic write-up as well:
http://bethlovesbollywood.blogspot.com/2009/08/love-aaj-kal.html
Getting Lucky on the web
24/07/09 22:29 Filed in: Filmi
I've begun to add film reviews on
PlanetBollywood.com. Here's a link to Soham
Shah's latest, a little ditty called
Luck.
http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f072909035126
http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f072909035126