It is the season of love gone wrong. From Aashiqui-2 to Raanjhanaa to The Great Gatsby to Lootera, it is as if we are being told, “watch out. Before you know, there will be a forest fire within that will spare nothing and no one.” As if love beyond a certain permissible degree of intensity will self-destruct inevitably. Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera chooses a lower octave than the films mentioned above to weave a gossamer web of a tenuous attraction that begins with a minor accident between the protagonists Pakhi (Sonakshi Sinha ) and Varun (Ranveer Singh). In many ways, Pakhi reminds one of Jane Austen’s heroines, especially Emma who secluded from the harshness of real life, lives surrounded by the love of a doting father, and lamp lit abundance. She is the daughter of a gracious landowner and has no conception of dissonance, of life waving a finger in her face and saying, “No.” Except for an occasional attack of asthma, she knows no discomfort and at the first stirrings of attraction for a quiet, intriguing stranger, she holds nothing back, starting with her smitten gaze that is fixated on Varun even when he is doing nothing more than shaving his face to the tune of a Geeta Dutt ditty from Baazi. She does not know it yet, but she is fated to go from being an Austen character to a Bronte heroine but there is time for that yet.
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With nothing more substantial to do than to fall self-indulgently in love, she spends a lot of time at her window, looking out for Varun (who is now staying as a guest in her sprawling haveli) Romance is created not over film songs but Hindi poetry read together, blank canvasses that lyrically burst into colour as she teaches him how to paint and here comes the O Henry twist. He wants to be remembered for a masterpiece he will someday paint. Yes, that is the only bit from The Last Leaf that culminates in the redemptive gesture, he makes in the end and you will know what that gesture is, if you have read the short story.
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Between that moment and this, Motwane paints the story with misty silences, making sure that nothing cuts us too deep as the two characters sometimes speak in whispers and look deeply in each other’s eyes, fight too but never really reach boiling point. Varun has a past and a secret.Pakhi is heedless to the point of confronting him in public about avoiding her and walking into his room at night before he is to leave her possibly forever. Like a child who cannot be denied anything she has set her heart on, she wants acknowledgement that he loves her and will force the admission out of him if he is unrelentingly silent. Motwane takes us from the quiet unsullied Manekpur, lovely like a wet painting to Dalhousie’s snowscapes that remind one of Shunji Iwai’s Love Letters, where you saw snow as a silent protagonist that challenges the characters to confront hidden pain.
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It is in Dalhousie that in a snow bound cottage overlooking a tree shedding its life leaf by leaf that we see Pakhi again, trying to forget the past that ruptured her faith in love, took away her beloved father (a gently imperious Barun Chandra) by writing it down, and then crunching her pain in a paper ball and throwing it again and again. She is sick but it is heart that has given up. It is a thing of beauty this cottage, like all living spaces in Lootera. It is cosy, its wooden floor faded with time, there is flowered pottery, muted lamps, couches and beds swathed in florals and the windows almost always covered with lace curtains except when Pakhi parts them to check whether the last leaf on the bare, winter struck tree has fallen or if she knows the rare visitor coming by through the gate.
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It is through this gate that she sees Varun again, walking in to maybe pull off another massive deception and to destroy what is left of her. And it is here, when stripped off the veneer of courtesy and the vestiges of love that the two really see each other and themselves for who they are. Without lies and illusions and there is so much rage that she won’t let him give her an asthma shot after an attack and they fight like wild children or two gnashing animals around the syringe, he intent upon helping her, she determined to refuse him. It is in this part of the film that no punches are pulled and we see it all. The flipside of life when sunshine and hope leave. She spitting blood, he shedding it. His own and of others with the police hot on his trail.
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Both have life wounds. Hers is invisible. His, as raw as a bullet wound and it is in the middle of this pain and this rage, that we are asked the question, “Can love survive this? Can it give something back, something as life sustaining as the will to live, to hope, to love? And the answer is, “Maybe, if it is strong enough.” And so we see what has survived. She won’t turn him over to the police. He won’t leave her to waste away. It is too late for them to be together but he will stay for one last redemptive flourish, one masterstroke of brilliance on her bleak canvas. And soon enough the conversations are back. And the whispers. And that instinctive rituals of communication that bind two people when they love each other.
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What the movie does most significantly is to not fall in the traps of Hindi film convention by rushing into love, lust, hurt, revenge, redemption. It simmers, flows and like a large canvas, slowly comes to life, stroke by stroke, tint by tint. Sonakshi has such a pure, cinematic face. It is unaltered by cosmetic interventions and like Vidya Balan, she is unapologetic about being natural and beautiful in a way that does not fit any yardstick And she can deliver dialogue like an actor who understands not just the language but its subtext. Her gaze and her smile and in the latter half, her rage are all effortless. Ranveer Singh has already established himself as a counterpoint to star kids with his debut film and here, he is content to tone his energy down and unleash it only in a few key scenes. It is going to be interesting to see how far this boy goes if he continues to choose parts like these. That scene when he free falls into snow like a leaf is really where the actor in him gets his ‘moment’ in the film. The moment when Varun has transcended his mistakes and perhaps even death. Its a beautifully crafted scene. The kind where wordless emotion, a man and nature come together to heal everything, even the losses yet to come. Beautiful.
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Vikrant Massey is one of the few intelligent TV actors we have and what we see of him in this film makes us wonder what he would do if he was a in lead role in an offbeat film. Few young actors deliver their lines better than he does. Adil Hussain in a slanting nod to the 50’s iconic baddie KN Singh, is as usual watchable. Amit Trivedi does not overwhelm the narrative too much thankfully and some of his tunes add an extra dimension to the perfectly framed moments. Mahendra J. Shetty’s cinematography recalls impressionist masters and the film reminds us that we are living in interesting times where young film makers are going beyond a Hindi film director’s brief to explore new ways of telling a story and new stories to tell.
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Reema Moudgil has been writing on art, theatre, cinema, music, gender issues, architecture and more in leading newspapers and magazines since 1994. Her first novel Perfect Eight ((http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7Yuc )won her an award from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University. She also edited Chicken Soup for Indian Woman’s Soul and runs unboxedwriters.com. She has exhibited her paintings in Bangalore and New York, taught media studies to post graduates and hosts a daily ghazal show Andaz-e-Bayan on Radio Falak (WorldSpace).