Lootera is a beautiful film.Such films are not made anymore nowadays.
Have you ever watched old hindi or bengali movies?For all you Hollywood fans out there,have you watched 'Casablanca' ?Or 'Gone with the wind'?If not, Lootera may seem strange to you.A seemingly lazy movie with a slow plot.
Vikramaditya Motwane, in his second film after the critically acclaimed 'Udaan' adapts an O.Henry short story to a beautiful and astonishingly breathtaking period film.
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Ranvir Singh as Varun Shrivastav |
The film follows Pakhi, the educated,cheery daughter of a bengali zamindar who falls in love with Varun, the young archaeologist who had come to Manikpur for seaching the remains of an ancient civilization.
Love blossoms between the two against the backdrop of a time when zamindari was outlawed in India .
As the title suggests, Vikram is actually a con man,who steals everything from the zamindar's house and leaves just before getting married to Pakhi. Many years later,Vikram and his friend Devdas had come to Dalhousie for another mission and unknowingly rents the guest house of a now relatively poor and terminally ill Pakhi.
Lootera has minimum dialogues,wonderfully written by the director but it is the non verbal communication which is the heart of this love story.The longing glances,the unbearable wait for acceptance and the little games played between the lead players is very much realistic and adds to the magic of the film.
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Varun and Pakhi(Sonakshi Sinha) walking in the beautiful scenery of Bengal |
It does not hurt that the cinematography is achingly beautiful.Every shot looks like a water colour painting,which looks even better as they are efficiently captured.The costumes and props too are pitch perfect.
Performance wise ,it is a winner.If anyone would have told me that I would love a Ranveer-Sonakshi starrer even few months back,I would have laughed at their faces. Ranveer Singh gives the best performance of his career(which honestly did not have many good performances) as the soft spoken hero.Sonakshi Sinha leaves behind the rural,feisty girl image,which she had perfected in 'Dabangg'(and bored the audiences to hell in all her other films) and plays a bengali girl wonderfully. Vikrant Massey gave an amazingly perfect performance as Varun's sidekick Devdas.I will look forward to his other performances eagerly from now on.
The best performance is without doubt given by Barun Chanda ,who plays the Zamindar with a world weary attitude and shows again why he was one of Satyajit Ray's leading men.
The movie is accompanied by a beautifully constructed background score.Equally great is the album,which boasts of songs like 'Sawaar Loon','Shikayatein'.'Ankahee','Zinda','Monta Re' and 'Manmarzian' and is easily the best album of this year till now.Both the score and songs are directed by Amit Trivedi(continuing his success from 'Dev D','Wake up Sid','Ishaqzaade' and 'Udaan').Lyrics are penned by another talented artist ,Amitabh Bhattacharya.
The movie lacks in certain points,it does not provide a credible background to Varun's life, and it really does slow down sometimes but when you watch the extremely heartfelt ending, I am sure you would love the movie even if it had Bobby Deol in it!
Lootera is easily a strong contender for movie of the year,and though it will not appeal to today's youth, who
are more into rom-coms, it is a movie which deserves to be seen by everyone.
