Aiyaa (2012): Rani Mukherjee's Bollywood stalking at its best/worst

I was disappointed earlier this year when Aiyaa didn’t come to the theaters here. Now that I’ve watched it online, I can kind of see why it didn’t. This movie is a hot mess. And yes, it is hot, and yes, it is a mess.

I love Rani Mukherjee like nobody’s business. If you told me to pick one Bollywood actress, she’d be it (if Kajol wasn’t retired, she might give Rani a run for her money in my affections). I just got through telling someone there isn’t a Rani Mukherjee performance I’ve seen that I haven’t liked.

And then...this.

Oh, yes, I still love Rani Mukherjee. But this movie is a giant pile of WTF.

Rani plays Meenakshi, a bubbly Marathi girl who’s obsessed with filmidom and lives with her head in the clouds — can you really blame her when living in reality means behind a Dumpster in a house shared with a scolding mom, inept father and just plain weird brother who won’t work?

Then she goes to get a job at a library and the interviewing boss is supremely creepy and sounds like he’s selling her into prostitution...yet all she does is work in a library.

Albeit with this finely frightening specimen who has no real purpose in the film:

Maina, who has a vodka monkey and screeches and wears strange things.

Oh, but while there, Meenakshi sees Surya (Prithviraj), a Tamil artist. Head-over-Bollywood-heels in no time flat. Meenakshi is in fact so smitten with Surya that she goes around asking everyone about him. What she comes up with is that he’s on drugs, doesn’t sleep (because he's too busy doing drugs!), squandered his father’s money and so on.

Hello sir. You don't even have to say anything. So you won't.

But, y’know, she can’t help being in love with him — the guy she never speaks to. So she begins learning Tamil so she can impress him by speaking in his own tongue. But alas, sully Surya is unimpressed and does not reply, even in Tamil.

Let the games begin.

The stalking games, that is.

Following someone around because you love them is popular in Bollywood (off the top of my head: Love Aaj Kal (retro storyline), Bombay, even Barfi and Dabangg to a degree). And there’s some Bollywood creeper precedent of Shahrukh Khan sneaking into Rani Mukherjee’s room in K2H2 (bed intruder, yaar) and Aamir Khan sneaking into Kareena Kapoor’s bedroom in 3 Idiots.

But Meenakshi takes it to a whole other level, yo.

Meenakshi follows Surya everywhere. Around campus. Into the bathroom. Home. And she even goes to his house under false pretenses to meet his mother — and steal a painted on T-shirt from his room. 
 

MEENAKSHI BEIN CREEPY FOLLOWIN INTO BATHROOM. STAPH!

Oh, yeah, and Meenakshi and her brother try to buy drugs so she can smell Surya’s scent.

Aiyaa! (Aside: part of me wonders if aiyaa passed into Hindi usage from the Chinese term āiyā, an expression of surprise or a mild curse.)

And then of course amidst all of this, Meenaski’s family is searching for a suitable husband for her. But somehow nobody wants to make an offer.

Who doesn't want to marry this? Even Surya's mom ♥s particularly wacky Meenakshi making up stories about being an orphan!

 
And I respond: WHAT! Stalkerish tendencies aside, who the hell WOULDN’T marry Rani Mukherjee?! (Other than SRK passing over her in K3G for Kajol, anyway.)

Ahem, anyway, the family eventually finds a sweet if dweebish and possibly gay fellow named Madhav. But while Meenakshi likes him well enough, he’s definitely not stalkable like Surya (though she does stand outside Madhav’s door and watch him get dressed...). So of course she’s conflicted between this impending marriage and her tendency to come apart at the seams any time Surya’s within 100 yards.

Oh the choices...

 
Oh, and along the way, we stop for some incredibly sexy dance numbers that Meenakshi is imagining  in her head with Surya. By God, Rani Mukherjee can dance and she has to be one of the sexiest in Bollywood (and 34! what what!).

BUT one of these happens to be the biggest Bollywood WTF song I have ever seen (and that’s including the insanity that is Oh Darling, Yeh Hai India). I get that it’s one big joke about South Indian masala — er, South Indian film star is liking this? — but still... WAT IS THIS BUSINESS?!

 

Meenakshi, you are certainly a weird one.

And no one lets poor Prithviraj talk until the end, when Meenakshi — on her engagement night! — stalks him to his late father’s factory — where he works all night for money has not squandered — and finds out HE DOES NOT DO DRUGS; HE MAKES INCENSE. This revelation is so much that she must, of course, faint. And thus our dear hero*, after carrying her and awakening her, finally speaks!

And what does he tell us? That without acknowledging Meenakshi all film long, he has noticed her stalking. That while Meenaski’s family has been trying to “push her out of her home” (an allusion to her unhappy impending nuptials), she has been trying to “enter his home.”

And somehow he is not only okay with all of this BLATANT CREEPINESS, but he says, “Hey, yo, let’s get engaged!”

?!?!!!?!??!?!?

Yes. On the night she was supposed to be engaged to another man, she instead becomes engaged to the man who hasn’t spoken or acknowledged her all film.

...yes. Thank you, Bollywood, for a happy resolution to stalking. Yes. That is EXACTLY what we needed.

Engagement. The happy ending to stalking.

I forgive very, very large amounts of filmi ridiculousness (mostly all things done in the name of humor, I suppose). I’m not so sure on this one. Maybe I would be quicker to forgive it if it were more funny and less creepy.

Well, at least Rani seemed to have fun making this one:

 



 

Prithviraj is the one wearing less clothes!

*“Prithviraj is so handsome, he is the heroine of the film. He has been fully exploited by the director as he has had to strip and go bare-chested, six pack and all. Usually in Hindi films, the heroine has to look hot.”- Rani, in an interview

^ this is frighteningly true about this film, and though Rani definitely looks hot, this is definitely a heroine-centric film of which she is the star and Prithviraj is the arm candy. I’m not so sure how I feel about that, though I can say part of me is happy that there is such a thing as a heroine-centric film with the man riding shotgun.

Reviewlets: Bombay, Pyaasa, aur Bobby

Three drive-by reviewlets of some of the films I watched about a month ago, all supposedly big films of their day: Bombay (1995), Pyaasa (1957), Bobby (1973).

Bombay (1995)

I was excited to find this one at the library and find out all of the great stuff said about it. Not only did it win tons of awards, it's also a Tamil film, and I was looking forward to expanding my repertoire of non-Hindi Indian films (I've seen a couple of Tamil films and parts of Telugu; nothing else, sadly). However, very unfortunately the library's copy was dubbed in Hindi. Now, I won't go on too long a rant, but I would much rather see something in its original language, as written and as intended by the director than to see something dubbed. The music was done, evidently, in different languages too. I got the Hindi versions, of course.

I really thought this film lived up to what was said of it. It was a look at Hindu-Muslim antagonisms and tensions from several angles. A Hindu man (Shekhar) falls in love with a (veiled) Muslim girl (Shaila), and though they really seem to have few if any qualms about their religious difference, their families do. Their fathers fight constantly. Even when the young couple leaves, they later have to find a balance of which religion their children will follow (ultimately both). Then they become entangled in horrible religious riots where each is in danger for his/her religion.

Now, despite all of that, the film is a lot more focused on the couple's relationship than I expected. For all of the horrible religious rioting and hatred going on, the film is surprisingly light-hearted for much of the time. And very suggestive, too!

But, sum total, I liked both its poignancy and its light-hearted romance.

Madrasapattinam (2010): Branching out to Kollywood!

So yesterday I finally FINALLY after two weeks of searching found a store in Manhattan that sells Bollywood DVDs. I swear I've searched every Indian store within 20 blocks looking for one, figuring around here it'd be like at home where the Indian bazaars sell mostly groceries but with saris, music and DVDs on the side. Apparently here Indian-Pakistani groceries sell... food. That's it.

But now that I've found my DVD store (Music of India at 28th and Lex), it's all good. I bought films I'd never heard of: 36 China Town, Chamatkar and Oh Darling! Yeh Hai India. I also bought Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani, which we've seen (Kiwi owns it). So! Those have been added to the collection.

But onward with more backlogged reviewing!

Madrasapattinam (2010): (Which it took me FOREVER to learn to spell AND pronounce)

 

Look, Kollywood! Time to break out of the Bollywood bubble. It’s our (well, really my; the others have yet to watch it) first South Indian and non-Hindi flick! And to be perfectly honest, Tamil sounds so funny to my ears. But does anyone have any recs for other good Tamil films? I'm interested to see the differences.

Synopsis: After the death of her husband, elderly and sickly Englishwoman Amy Wilkinson vows to return to Madras (now Chennai), where she spent her youth, much to the chagrin of her daughter and granddaughter Catherine, who accompanies her. She gives no reasons for it but embarks on a quest to find a man named Parithi who she knew some 60 years before. Through her memory, we learn the story of how young Amy (Amy Jackson), daughter of the British Madras governor, fell in love with Parithi (Arya), a man of the dhobi launderer class, but that they were forced apart when India’s independence forced Amy’s family to leave the country. In the present time, the elder Amy now seeks Parithi out to return the thali necklace (equivalent of a wedding ring) he gave to her before they were parted as a sign that no one could take her from India or from him.

I searched for this film high and low (as in really, you have no idea of the hours spent looking for it) after seeing someone talk about it on LiveJournal, only to find out after all of my blood, sweat and tears that it was… on YouTube. With subtitles. Well, there’s hours of my life I’ll never get back, but now I know better than to not check YouTube first.

First off, let me say I pretty much loved this film, which I almost knew I would. I love period pieces in any language, and I’ve often found myself wanting more period pieces set in colonial British India or newly independent India (maybe this is also just because I’m fascinated with British colonial literature, especially colonial India; I have a particularly unnatural attachment to Kipling). I don’t know that I’ve found many of them – Lagaan and Jodhaa Akbar (both of which I LOVED) and more modernly Devdas and Water. So this… definitely a happy find. (And any recommendations for period pieces would be much appreciated.)

Everything about the 1940s Madras setting was simply beautiful. Costumes (even though some of the formalwear was not 40s British appropriate), locations, politics…

I feel like singing, "One of these things is not like the other..."

The street in Madras.

And again. I wish I could have found you better images.

 The performances from the two leads, also wonderful. The attraction between Arya and Amy Jackson – both of whom are quite easy on the eyes – definitely sizzles from the beginning and continues even when the film feels like it could have done more to show their falling in love. I’m also quite impressed because Amy Jackson is, I found out, my age (20). Also I couldn’t tell for sure if she was dubbed by someone else (because I know that’s general practice for nonspeakers in Hindi film), but I thought she learned her own Tamil lines and she sounded great. However, the English dialogues of just about everybody in this film had awkward inflections to them that made them feel not quite right.

The love story itself was also quite powerful, emerging between the two least likely people to fall in love, and being such a huge impact on the lives of the two involved that Amy comes back to search for her Parithi 60 years later.

Good chemistry and neither of us is hard to look at.

And while I spent about 30 to 45 minutes lamenting that Amy, who was brave enough to sneak out and meet Parithi and also to defy her parents, turns into a bit of a wallflower while Parithi struggles with Robert (Amy's would-be suitor and the violent chief of police), her strength comes through in the end. She works up the courage and the smarts to escape her mother's attempt to drag her to Delhi, physically attacks Robert when she fears for Parithi and, ultimately, works up the emotional strength to push an injured Parithi into the river to save him and surrender herself when it looks like they'll be captured. 

Amy is the powerful protagonist of this film.

While Amy is gorgeous, she's not just another pretty face heroine. Both she and Parithi grapple with some pretty serious decisions about being together and sacrifice.

That being said, the film isn’t perfect. I had problems with its rhythm. In the early sections, the film has the most ridiculously sharp, low-budget-style transitions. I thought the film was excellent quality in the sets, filters and camera-work – all above and beyond what I was expecting. But the blatant lack of transitions (and/or lingering shots in some places) was distracting and cheapened things for me.

The villain, Amy’s would-be fiancé Robert Ellis (Alexx ONell), is also pretty paper-thin as far as a villain goes. He’s the stereotypical ruthless British colonizer/evil, possessive attempted-suitor. I suppose you could roughly compare him to Andrew Russell, the jealous Indian-hating officer villain in Lagaan, and Andrew comes out on top – equally as vicious with twice the character depth.

Obviously we don't like male Britishers in this film. To prove it...

...we have wrestling matches where we throw him over our shoulder.

And trust me, he gets his revenge with some very painful-to-watch torture scenes.

 The story doesn’t do much to explain what happens to Amy once she leaves Madras and goes back to England. We obviously know that she gets married and has a daughter. How did her marriage come about? Did she think of Parithi? What’s her daughter’s name? Does her daughter not know anything at all about her mother’s time in India? I kind of wanted these questions answered but got nothing.

An old Amy, whom we know precious little about, on her quest to find Parithi.

**Spoilers about the ending** And the ending… Really sad. The modern half of the story is very much reminiscent of the American film Letters to Juliet (perhaps it’s “inspired” by that) but with the much more dramatic ending. Basically it invalidates most of the struggle through the film, too, because Amy struggles for their love in the 40s only to be dragged away in 1947 after independence and then goes through everything in the modern period searching for Parithi as her health fails her only to find out he died 12 years before. (And on top of that, we don’t really know how he dies.) The only way that Amy and Parithi get to be together is when she DIES on his grave. Kind of a downer. The whole film kind of made me hope that for all that they went through, Parithi and Amy would at least be reunited briefly in old age. Not so. 

Oh, hai. We're both dead so now we can be together in fantasy.

**end spoilers**

Overall, definitely one I’d recommend watching, and I’m looking forward to seeing more films with either Amy Jackson or Arya. :)