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Sad, very sad

Suparn Verma

Nirmal Pandey and Sonali Kulkarni in Jahan Tum Le Chalo Click for bigger pic!

What do you say about a film that looks like an art film, has intellectual pretensions, and moves along as fast as the continental shift? The word 'boring' may have come to mind, but we, feeling kinder, choose to peg it at a mild 'slow'.

Mind you, Jahan Tum Le Chalo has all the right acting ingredients -- Nirmal Pandey and Sonali Kulkarni, both of whom acted together in Amol Palekar's Daayra, besides Jimmy Shergil who, sporting a beard, had first popped into the sidelights in Maachis. JTLC is made by debutant director Desh Deepak.

The story circles around Namrata Shourie (Sonali Kulkarni), a journalist and social activist who has this relationship going on with Shantanu Arya (Nirmal Pandey), a glamour photographer. Namrata decides she isn't getting any younger and suggests that marriage wouldn't be a bad idea. But he thinks it is since it could hurt his single status that draws the younger models to him.

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This is about the time Namrata meets Akash (Jimmy Shergil), who has still to recover from the trauma of being in a car crash that claimed his parents. So, at the age of 21, he has the sombre air of a newscaster describing a mishap that's claimed ten. Akash lives with his grandmother (Nirupa Roy) who, being made of sterner stuff, is unscathed.

Akash falls for Namrata after reading her articles. But she takes the young man for granted, to the point that even the fact that he knows more about her than partner Shantanu himself doesn't scare her.

Namrata finally uses Akash in her emotional games with Shantanu who, thus arm-twisted, finally agrees to marry her. That's also when Akash gets his grandmother's okay to marry a woman older than him.

That sounds like a fairly interesting idea, doesn't it? But it looks terrible.

For one, the film has no pace. Despite a name like Jahan Tum Le Chalo (Wherever You Take Me), it covers very little ground. If there is one thing that relieves the tedium, it's the idea -- privately entertained -- that this is just the way to make an 'art' film.

Jimmy Shergil in Jahan Tum Le Chalo Click for bigger pic!

Bad editing, we think, is a great way to underline an artistic statement. Additionally, between each piece of dialogue must be inserted a significant pause, lasting about a minute at the least, no matter that the characters look like they are hanging around waiting for the director to yell 'action'.

The deliberate pauses make you wait, expecting something. They're exploring dynamic tension, the metaphysical conflict between the beaten and the established, you tell yourself, wondering if it sounds the right highbrow thing to say. And you pat a yawn down and try to look intelligent.

Suraj Saneem, who has written the dialogues of the film, may either have never been in love or must have surely lived in an era that rejoiced in ambiguous metaphor.

The director has tried to make a progressive, modern film, but somewhere he's simply lost touch with his characters. The journalist-cum-social-activist thing is all very fine and noble. Which perhaps is why Namrata dictates a column to her secretary in which she pans beauty pageants because they debase women, comparing it to the old kotha system.

She also hates it when Shantanu calls her a cheez (thing). She tells him that she wants more in life then just being with him. Politically-correct feminist, what have you.

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But the same strong woman ignores her man's philandering, and the fact that she is used and abused as a physical and emotional resource. She also wants to get married and doesn't think twice before using one lover to manipulate the other. We admit that such varying and conflicting elements may make a real woman, but we do hope she isn't a political statement herself.

Shantanu plays a pretty straightforward character with few complications, that of the MCP, while Akash swings from passionate love to pointless fragility.

Sonali Kulkarni is okay in parts but she just isn't an 'older woman'. Sorry, she just doesn't look the part to start with. When she looks into the mirror and is upset by crow's feet, you feel like reassuring her that there are none and are unlikely to be any for quite some time.

Jimmy Shergil looks pretty good though his dialogue-delivery could do with some honing up. Nirmal Pandey's role is vaguely similar to the one in Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin, where he had two women fall for him; here, he's surrounded by a bevy of models with his lover looking on anxiously from the fringes. And he looked as uncomfortable in the lovemaking sequences then as he does now.

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Talking about love scenes, Desh Deepak essays an elaborately long one in the beginning of the film. It's rather sad, you know, because neither Nirmal nor Sonali can kiss to save their lives, or at least the film. They look uncomfortable, and when they try to show themselves in the throes of orgiastic ecstasy, it looks like they are having serious organic trouble.

The music by Vishal has two very catch numbers though the remaining sound repetitive. The lyrics of Gary Lawyer's song may have sounded right in Hindi but you wonder what on earth 'For luck I draw tattoos on the moon' would mean? Of course, it sounds very profound, so we'd better let that pass.

One place the film certainly scores is in Ahmed Khan's clean choreography, the only element that's smooth and uncluttered.

Quite clearly, Jahan Tu Le Chalo misses the bus. Desh Deepak might do better next time with a new editor and a better writer. But might is such a sad word at times, isn't it?