Kathmandu

Sometimes movies depict a story in such a way that it stays with you long after your walk away from the screen. It somehow strikes that cord and the only word that keeps playing in your mind is — brilliant. You smile and wonder life indeed is a tamasha (spectacle). It’s simple if you look at it, after birth follows education, career, marriage, family, old age and the inevitable death. Yet it’s not so simple after all. In the process the real you is lost somewhere, some find it and some don’t. Tamasha tells such a story of Ved Vardhan Sahni (Ranbir Kapoor). He has always been a storyteller, unacceptable in conventional society, so he begins playing his part to ‘fit in’. This makes him put a wall between the real him and what he portrays until he meets Tara Maheshwari (Deepika Padukone). The film is a love story, but more than that it is a mirror, a mirror for a ‘mediocre person’.

Imtiaz Ali has written and directed a story showing how the rat race changes us and how every ordinary person is not ordinary after all. This film has complex layers, but Ali has unfolded it beautifully. He makes you recall the lines from Shakespeare’s poem All The World’s A Stage — All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts...

The initial part of the film becomes tedious because you cannot fathom what the director is trying to show, but gradually every dot connects. He shows life’s tamasha. Even the songs for that matter relay the story. This couldn’t have been possible without AR Rahman. He gives the flow with his ballad music.

Kapoor and Padukone are the perfect actors for the role of Ved and Tara. Their acting is mature and you feel they have evolved. Ved unconsciously wears a mask and when he meets his real self, he is flabbergasted. Kapoor pulls it off with finesse. Tara, on the other hand, is a sorted person with a well-established career and falls in love with a person who is lost, where people perceive him as mad. Regardless, she wants to be with him, but it’s not easy. That desperation of being in love, wanting to rescue the person, but feeling helpless is what Padukone brings forth. For the first time creating a tamasha couldn’t have been better!

Tamasha

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Cast: Deepika Padukone,

Ranbir Kapoor, Javed Sheikh

Director: Imtiaz Ali

Being screened at QFX Cinemas