Why Is Tamasha The Truest Movie Around? – Guest Post by Nishant Singh Thakur

Why Is Tamasha The Truest Movie Around?

| A Movie Dissection |

 

TAMASHA ( 2015 )

Genre: Romance/Drama

Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Piyush Mishra, Vivek Mushran

Director: Imtiaz Ali

Running Time: 155 min

‘Tamasha (English: A spectacle) is a 2015 Indian romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Imtiaz Ali.’

This above line is taken from Wikipedia. Rom-Comedy? No, it was not a romantic comedy film.

Re-watching any movie by Imtiaz like is a bliss. Every time you see them, you could find a slight difference. His movies always have some poetry around the corner. In all, especially Tamasha is a vintage wine. Every next time it gets better and you just can’t get rid of it.

The movie is based on a psychological theory given by Carl Roger’s ‘Congruence theory’  i.e. How to be ideal self.

Ved, the corporate, is obedient, well behaved, groomed and has a good image around colleagues while Ved in Corsica is nomadic soul, expressive, outgoing, ideal self, one he always wanted him to be. The conflict between the two different characters within him or in-congruence between these two resulted in him acting just like a bipolar person in the middle of every decision, he made quickly in the movie.

From throwing books and crying in the room, leaving Tara at Corsica, giving away ring to that transgender on the traffic signal, shouting at Tara’s place violently, leaving tara again in that cafe scene, many quick decisions he took in the whole movie. Bipolar is a clinical condition termed for someone who’s mentally ill but here he was ill of himself. *smirks*

Ved, A boy who just didn’t know what to do in his life later turned into a guy who lost his identity in the corporate world. A boy who never allowed himself to follow dreams, a boy whose dreams get killed in the college time itself and now he molded himself to fit into the mad rat-race. He’s the one who wakes up, brushes teeth, eats cereal, wears a tie, stops at the traffic light on way to work, keeps elevator door open for others, smiles politely at colleagues, and delivers numbing PowerPoint presentations.

Tara, a realist girl, falls in love with a guy who doesn’t even know what he wants. And in the end, she becomes a woman who understands the man behind the materialistic smile and whose love and acceptance allows Ved to become who he was meant to be. Tara was always acceptable throughout the movie to his tantrums, his allegations but in the end, only she was the one who handled this *tamasha* Ved created around himself.

After a fight when she rejects him and came to meet him in a cafe after that morning scene he created, you can see the atmosphere around them, when both of them were trying to hold each other but just can’t. Ved who turns into another person in front of her and then there’s a scene where both of them are crying.

*This place, background score and obviously both of them made this scene mesmerizing*

In the middle of this scene, he taunts at Tara…

“Tu kisi aur ki jagir hai, jaan-e-jigar.”

Tara knows that if she utters even a single word which could hurt him, he’ll probably start doing a same old thing again. Tara, who just don’t know how to hold him without hurting him and Ved, Hero of the story finds himself in a condition where he thinks Tara is a villain in his life. And he leaves the place, Tara later goes around to find him and searches around the corners of the street only to find him sitting in a corner and as she sits there a little away from him, Ved again goes away from her.

Everything about this scene is about desperation.

If you’ll look closer, Tamasha is more about life rather than about love.

Tamasha – a beautiful story

There is a guy who needs to be saved from himself, from the society, from the thing called love and there is Tara, a hopeless romantic girl, who first falls in love with the chaotically confused guy and later finds out that he’s not the one she wants him to be.

The movie is about psychological disorders we see every day in our own lives. Everyone in the story is so messed up, imperfectly doing their day to day work just to fit into the monotony of life.

The movie looks like a mirror. Every time when you see Ved is in confusion or something, there’s a mirror.

The mirror reflects Ved but more than that, it reflects us.

From the beginning, it looks like Tara is the one who hopelessly waits for the miracle to meet Ved again just because of the things happened between them during the Corsica trip. Ved went to Corsica when he was not his older self who allowed himself to dream. He killed his dreams and ambitions in college itself and molded himself to live the rat-race.

In the end, this movie shows us that love is freedom. Love is not just about a girl and a boy sitting over a cloud and kissing each other but love demands endless compromise, suffering, pain and sharing everything with each other not just a side of the double sized bed and sometimes separation too. Love is like breathing, you can’t make someone breathe. Love is the same, it comes when needed. Not necessarily immediately but it’s always around the corner.

Songs from the movie with meanings –

The lyrics of each and every song which is written by Irshad Kamil has something for us and they’ve miserably beautiful meanings.

The Song ” Agar tum sath ho ” depicts the feeling of a girl who tells how happy she’d be if they are together, while the guy says it wouldn’t matter because the life is always a mess and would remain so even if they are together. This song is a perfect fold to the situation in which both protagonists find themselves in, Deepika portraying Tara’s broken yet concerned state and Ranbir portraying Ved’s inner struggle and frustration.

The Song “Heer toh badi sad hai” is a satire about a girl who is just lost in her own world waiting for the hero of the story to come again in her life and probably fall in love with her. Here, the reference of Heer is taken from Heer-Raanjha, a famous romantic couple in Indian History, similar to Romeo-Juliet.

“Safarnama” is a beautiful song about discovering oneself. Safarnama is an Urdu word for travelogue and here, is used in the context of self-discovery. A song with a little but meaningful lyrics elaborates the difference between *safar* and suffer.

The ‘Wat Wat’ song is about a guy who just got rejected by a girl, a guy who turned into a sadist soul. Few lines from this song are translated as follows.

” Jaan Gaye Leke Surkhi Kajra Tape-Tap Ke,
Latke Jhatke Maar Tu Hamka Phansawe,

O Pari Ee To Bata
Tu Kaun Disa, Tu Kaun Mulk Yoon Haank Le Jaave
Haule Haule Baat Pe Tu Hamri Waat Laga”

‘Chali Kahani’ is the main theme song of Tamasha where the protagonist tells about a love story, a love story which remains the same since all the time and going again and again in the same direction. There’s no start or an end. You can see all the references here from the other mythological stories like Sohni-mahiwal , Radha-Krishna and there’s a line “Chutput Aashiqui Me Dhali Kahani.” This probably means molded in stray kind of a story, a song where one can feel every emotion.

And now the final song of the movie.

“Tu koi aur hai”  is more of a poetry where a person is telling himself what he’s. What he wants to be.

Irshad Kamil is a man of words, the lyricist behind all these songs cum poetry.A.R. Rehman’s touch to the music makes the whole picture, picture perfect.

Dialogues :

• Ved: Tujhe To Pyaar Ho Gaya Hai Pagli !!

Tara: Haan, Haan Ved.

Ved: Par Kisi Aur Se.

• “Do kaudi ki hasti hai par uss se khelu?

Fenk bikheru apna sab kuch uski khatir?”

• “Kise chahiye ? Man ka sona , aankh ki moti!! Kise padi hai andar kya hai? Hoti ret hai, dikhta pani.!!”
• ‘Bachpan mujshe kehta hain mein bahut special hoon, lekin usko to maine kuchal diya’

Popular Scenes –

* When the Autowala who tells his story about why he can’t make it to the Bollywood and then both of them sit in the corners of a street, he; Ved starts rhyming his misery and other people come together to listen to him.

* When that storyteller “Piyush Mishra” gets angry on him and tells him to stop seeking others for his own happy story.

“Apni kahani mujh se pooch raha hai! Kayaar! Kisse darta hai?

Hai Kaun yaha? Tu bata kya hota hai aage

Kya hai Teri kahani?

Kya hai tere dil ke andar…

Bata kya hai tu?”

Then Final happy scene just like Corsica when both Taara and Ved are just being themselves and they’ve headphones and they’re dancing to a song we don’t hear.

The Tamasha Verdict ­-

Despite having a pretty nice storyline, the movie couldn’t perform as expected because it lacks drama. Here hero of the story is not beating someone or singing a song for his girlfriend. Our hero here is facing several issues. He looks more like a victim of what happened to him. He cries, gets annoyed, loses his patience. He doesn’t know how to handle rejections. He’s probably not a hero for a crowd who just entered a multiplex to entertain themselves.

Why do movies like them get little attention?

We need to understand that cinema is evolving. The mainstream cinema shows us eye soothing things which are not really obvious. I’ve never seen someone’s dupatta stuck in my watch. We the materialistic people don’t think twice when the hero of the movie beats some 15-20 men in a single row but remark movies like this as unconventional or flop. There’s very less number of filmmakers who are making good movies, movies that are worth watching. We just need to calm ourselves for the first 15 minutes where the movie looks like crap. It was definitely an emotionally intelligent film targeted at a specific audience.

The cinematography, acting, and all those songs were super balanced in this movie. Ranbir and Deepika portrayed their roles wonderfully. Their chemistry was off the charts and Imtiyaz Ali as always made this mind-blowing.

There is a Hollywood movie called “Little Manhattan” which has one wonderful monologue  that perfectly describes what Ved got at the end i.e.

“Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. Love isn’t about ridiculous little words. Love is about grand gestures. Love is about airplanes pulling banners over stadiums, proposals on jumbotrons, giant words in skywriting. Love is about going that extra mile even if it hurts, letting it all hang out there. Love is about finding courage inside of you that you didn’t even know was there.”

Conclusion:

Despite the fact that it was just a movie, the most beautiful part of this movie was coming across all the layers of suppression that cemented our hero, they were simply broken by a simply complex thing called love. Around the corners of our lives, we come across the same situations which are extremely personal but later exposed to people. As much as we try to cover it, these moments hit us like winds and our unwilling or unknowing reaction to others in public is embarrassing and beyond control. Even after all these chaos, the hero of the story is saved by a girl without a sword. All things come naturally to us, all you need is a little push.

All one can constantly learn from the movie is “There is always a getaway, waiting for you out there. You just need to find who you’re. There is always hope among all the chaos.”

~Nishant Singh Thakur

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