 |
DIL PE MAT LE YAAR!! (2000) ("Don't Take It To Heart!!")
Writer: Saurabh Shukla Music: Vishal Starring: Manoj Bajpai, Tabu, Saurabh Shukla, Aditya Shrivastava, Divya Jagdale, Kishore Kadam, Harsh Chhaya, Prithvi Zutshi, Vijay Raj Running Time: 149 Minutes 30 Seconds
CineRating: 6.5 out of 10
|
As most filmgoers realize, Hollywood movies rarely present an accurate depiction of the realites faced by the majority of people who actually go to see them. In "Hollywood"-reality, characters live in expensive homes, don't worry about paying bills, and are immensely successful in life without ever having to lose their moral principles (temporarily, perhaps, but never permanently). The gulf between reel-life and real-life is even wider in Bollywood, where the decor and clothing of movie folk are impossibly rich, and where characters expend all their energy on one colorful romantic encounter after another rather than the economic hardships faced by the lower to middle-class citizens that flock to these films. But while critics attack Bollywood for its frivolity, endlessly formulaic plots and utter lack of socio-realism, defenders argue that these films are the ideal form of escapism for local audiences who seek three hours of pure, lavish spectacle in order to remove themselves from the drudgeries of everyday living.
The conflict between what Bollywood regularly presents to its faithful viewers and what reality actually has in store for them provides much of the dramatic irony and thematic power of director Hansal Mehta's uneven but absorbing dark comedy Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!!. The film was written by and co-stars Saurabh Shukla, who was also one of the co-writers and stars of Ram Gopal Varma's Satya [1998] (playing "Kallu Mama," Satya's portly and loyal friend to the end). If Satya sought to debunk many of the glamorous cliches of the Hindi gangster film, Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!! seeks to do the same for Bollywood cinema in general. Whereas many Bollywood movies typically end with characters sacrificing their own selfish desires in order to provide happiness for others, Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!! takes the opposite tack by suggesting that our materialistic society responds to adversity not with awe-inspiring acts of selflessness, but with cowardly acts of self preservation and betrayal.
The film's first hour, though, is deceptively familiar as it opens with the standard tale of the poor, innocent village transplant who falls head over heels for an upscale Mumbai beauty. In this case, the lead character is essayed by Manoj Bajpai (which should already set off alarm bells), the unconventional actor who shot to fame with his vivid portrayal of an underworld don in Satya. Here, Bajpai's character is an honest mechanic named Ramsaran Pandey who works in a dishonest auto repair shop that regularly overcharges its customers. After Ramsaran intervenes to save a pretty journalist named Saamya (Tabu) from unnecessary repair work on her car, the impressed reporter writes a newspaper article praising the mechanic's integrity. Now something of a minor celeb, Ramsaran begins spending more time with Saamya, who continues to write flattering articles about his exploits and even approaches famed filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt (played by the actual Mahesh Bhatt) to do a movie on Ram's life. However, after getting drunk one evening, the love-smitten Ramsaran pays Saamya a late-night visit and starts to force himself on her, leading to his violent expulsion from her apartment. After she cuts him off completely, the heartbroken Ramsaran soon loses his job and becomes desperate to get out of Mumbai -- leading to his merciless exploitation by friends and relatives.
The film's opening credits sequence, which features the breezy but bittersweet song "Swagatham" playing over stark shots of unglamorous street life, gives an indication that Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar will not be your typical Bollywood musical, and the terrific first song-and-dance number, "Dil Ki Khotari Mein," which starts out in the very un-Bollywoodish confines of an auto mechanic shop, confirms that we are closer to Dancer in the Dark territory than to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The song-and-dance sequences are essential to the film's story in much the same way that the fantasy interludes in Terry Gilliam's Brazil established the conflict between the lead character's inspiring flights of fantasy versus the cruel banalities of everyday life. While Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!! presents early on the realistic details of its impoverished lead character's cramped and overpopulated living quarters, the first half of the film is lighthearted and humanistic enough so that even an episode involving an ill-advised porno shoot by Ramsaran's hapless pal Gaitonde (Saurabh Shukla) and his sleazy friend Tito (Aditya Shrivastava) comes off as whimsically comic. But, like the film's protagonist, the audience is set up to have the rug snatched out from under them, and as Ramsaran's relationship with Saamya sours, so too does the movie turn grimmer and grimmer. As he falls into a downward spiral of despair and violence, Ramsaran's genial companions are quickly revealed to be nothing more than shameless opportunists, and their behavior that seemed comically amusing at first, takes on a far more sinister tone as the bleakness of the situation intensifies. That the pressure to live up to society's perceived standards can corrupt even the saintliest of souls is illustrated by Ramsaran's own surrender to tempatation, and the feeble ways he tries to rationalize it.
The film's final half hour crosses over into wildly implausible terrain, but the movie is held together by the edgy performance of Manoj Bajpai, who invests Ram with a combustible mixture of sweetly unassuming innocence and disturbingly raw emotion. While the character is quite dissimilar from the brash gang leader he portrayed in Satya, both films are in essence tales of young men who arrive in Mumbai seeking honest work, only to end up caught in the clutches of the underworld. Though Satya boasts a tighter narrative and a gut-wrenching finale, Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!! is the more offbeat of the two with its blackly comic tone in stark contrast to Satya's straightforward earnestness. By the end of film, the lines between reality and fantasy have crossed to such a degree that it's impossible to tell whether what's happening onscreen is for real or merely a scene from the award-winning screenplay of Saamya, whose belief that Ram's story ends on an upbeat note only emphasizes the shallowness inherent in this film's society.
This is a pretty typical Eros DVD release, with noticeable print wear, occasional splice lines, and poor contrast. Watchable, but not much more.
|
|
|
DVD Specs:
Eros DVD
All Regions
Anamorphic widescreen 2.25:1
Removable English Subs (songs included)
Trailers for Beti No. 1; Jungle; Har Dil Jo Pyaar Karega; Karobaar; Hamara Dil Aapke Paas Hai; Dhadkan; Josh
|
|