6/24/2004 » Film

Yuva is the latest from the director of Bombay, Dil Se and Roja, starring Om Puri, Ajay Devgan, Abhishek Bachchan, Vivek Oberoi, Kareena Kapoor, Rani Mukherjee, and Esha Deol. Mani Ratnam is one of my favorite directors, along with Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Yuva is a morality play about the need for new blood and electoral reform in Indian politics, done new wave style. It’s well worth seeing, but it’s not as distinctive as Ratnam’s previous films.

A quick Ratnam refresher: Bombay had Manisha Koirala at her pretty, delicate best and some incredibly haunting A.R. Rahman melodies, including the title instrumental and its shivering violins. Dil Se launched Malaika Arora and ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya,’ the choreography of which is now a centerpiece of Bombay Dreams. Roja, a Tamil film with classic Rahman tunes like ‘Choti Si Asha,’ was remade in Hindi as The Terrorist. Alaipayuthey permanently broke with the standard, candyfloss love marriage script, focusing on a marriage well after the end credits scroll in a typical Bollyflick. It was remade in Hindi as Saathiya.

I saw Yuva at Loews State in Times Square, a second-run mainstream theater which seems to have a distribution lock on the latest and greatest desi flicks. It’s centrally located facing the square, on the basement level of a Virgin Megastore. Kal Ho Na Ho, a loving paean to New York, cut some kind of cross-promotion deal where the film premiered at the theater, and the theater itself showed up in the Times Square scenes in the film. I’d love to know which brown person is behind the distribution deal, it’s brilliant, and unctuously, typically desi. The screening room was massive, one of their main screens, and the theater was packed on a Saturday night with desis and a single black family whose members looked kindly but bewildered, despite the subtitles.

Yuva is self-consciously hip, Ratnam’s answer to the landmark, widely-copied Dil Chahta Hai, which kicked off a new wave of modernist Bollywood cinema. Fifty Cent’s ‘It’s Yo’ Birthday’ plays in the background at a sleek Barista cafe. A fight scene takes place at a shiny new mall (these are only a couple of years old in India), and there’s a scene set on the Calcutta subway.

Unlike in Dil Chahta Hai, the hipness feels forced, like your grandma suddenly picking up Eminem. The rave scenes were totally fake, awful false notes an otherwise competent film. I’ve been dancing in Bombay, and though kids ape Western styles, they’re not nearly as cheesy as the lines these actors are forced to emit. To Abu Ghraib with the dialogue writer, for a taste of his own torture.

Ratnam’s narrative arc is best at its flimsiest, in the achingly tender, couple-y, play-fighting scenes between Bachchan and Mukherjee. That’s Alaipayuthey all over again; the director has a sensitive ear for real relationships, rare even in Hollywood. The narrative structure is novel-like: a single incident filmed from multiple angles links all three protagonists. There’s none of the Sati Savitri squeamishness of normal commercial cinema; pre-wedlock pregnancy is given a starring role, and the mother is decidedly unglamorous.

The cinematography makes great use of stop-frame effects. There’s one intensely moody shot at night (a grainy motorcycle ride on a beach), and a fantastic overhead shot with rain shuddering straight down. But the beach romance between Kapoor and Oberoi looks like a cologne ad, it’s far too primped and posed. Ratnam is utterly distinctive with the day-to-day affection of a great romantic relationship, but his gloss isn’t artfully applied.

Aside from the remarkable, intense Ajay Devgan, the leads aren’t particularly charismatic; new wave or not, they aren’t as magnetic as more experienced actors like the trio in Dil Chahta Hai, Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Akshaye Khanna. Vivek Oberoi turns out to be a particularly light souffle, and he and Kapoor have little romantic chemistry. A.R. Rahman’s music is unmemorable in this film, which is unusual to anyone infected by the melodic earworms of Alaipayuthey. There’s lots of boring keening from a choir that seems lifted from a particularly dull stretch of Lord of the Rings.

The Times reviewed Yuva through its Upper West Side, weak Bollywood aficionado prism and, as usual, completely missed all context. They should emulate the Village Voice, they really need someone with a foot in both cultures doing these reviews.