I know a movie has touched my heart, when long gone after I've seen it, I find myself re-living those scenes in my head - It almost is as if I've brought home a piece of it back with me. It isn't too often that happens and it happened yesterday with Lootera. I stayed away from reading full reviews till I saw it for myself, since I wanted to be unbiased and form my own opinion. And what beauty it turned out to be - such poetry in motion. The first thing I did when I got home, was search for 'The Last Leaf'. I wanted to see what O'Henry wrote of in 1904 and how much inspiration Lootera drew from the story. When I discovered that the only part was the bit about the masterpiece being the leaf (a key part of the movie, not denying), it took me by surprise, that the rest of it was fairly original screenplay. Such subtlety in story-telling, such beautiful cinematography and such beautifully etched out characters as Varun and Pakhi are so rare in cinema nowadays, not to forget a movie that holds its ground without any garish item songs, crass love-making scenes, loud music, cuss words or over the top product placement - the things producers do to milk a movie.
When I think of penning down my thoughts, I find so many of them running loose and fighting for attention, it almost frightens me if I'll ever get them all in words.
The storyline for the first half is pretty plain. Boy meets girl, love at first sight. Boy thugs girl's father, he dies. She retreats into a set of lonely sorrowful days. The second half however is what lifts the movie and takes it a whole new level. We know of Bollywood having done some miserable last moments scenes, some woefully funny revenge scenes, but the beauty here is in how each character is treated as a real person with real emotions and not someone twisted and made to look awkward in the end to suit commercial audiences and stereotypical storylines. Pakhi's characteristics and nature till the end of the movie remain consistent with how she is in the first half. You see bits of the first half and picture her acting a certain way if she were real - and she does just that. Harbour a fugitive who she helped the police nab in the first place, yet try her best to keep him away from her when he tries to talk to her - so contradicting, but yet so in line with the person you imagine her to be - the person a broken-hearted, angry, yet in love Pakhi would be.
There are some scenes in the movie, which completely steal your heart - some as the compelling pre-interval sequence, where you see fleeting scenes of the Kolkata bar with Varun and his mates, Pakhi dressing herself in royal finery, for her engagement with the love of her life, a lost and broken father with the sudden wrinkles of disbelief on his face. Ah, beauty. It almost shows you in an instant, how the very same moment is for three different people with inter-twined lives but has distinctly different emotions for each of them - Guilt, Heartbreak and Mistrust.
When Varun first sets sight on Pakhi (after their little accident), there is no fancy music playing in the background, to suggest love at first sight, though from just the pace of the scene and the expressions on their faces, you know there was a spark. For cinema to bring that out, without a deliberate attempt to drive home that chemistry is absolutely wonderful. Their interactions, completely normal, slow, but fondness growing with each hour they spend teaching each other painting - is the kind I haven't seen before. They don't sing songs around trees, don't even touch each other till before the interval maybe and yet you feel for the two lovers. You feel their warm emotion in each scene, you feel their longingness to soak in that extra moment. Pakhhi's mischievous satisfaction of wearing his jacket and smoking his cigarette, just to grab that extra whiff of his scent, to almost feel him wrapped around her - what a beautiful kind of romance.
You also cannot ignore how the sets, the clothes, the environment, the British cutlery, brass vessels, the jewellery, just the entire era has been re-created to lend that extra feel to each dialogue. The fireplace lit wooden floors of Dalhousie - a stark contrast against the hard snow outside - adds just that tinge of vintage romance. The music, apt - vintage string instruments and classical Indian music when talking of angst and pain and louder wind instruments when playing scenes showing the crime and escape of Varun. The music of Lootera has a journey of its own. You can listen to the album and the movie will replay in your head.
The scene towards the end, where Pakhi tells Varun how his life is in danger and yet at the end has only one question - only one single question, which kept her alive all this while, irrespective of the fact that this is the man who cost her a loving father's embrace. This is the man, who drove her to this state of loneliness and illness, leaving her literally counting her days. She innocently just wants to know if he ever loved her. At that moment, nothing else mattered, but knowing if he ever felt the same. You can't help but shed a tear for the woman, who hated this man for years, yet kept that piece of her heart soft and loving for him - because What if? What if she wasn't a fool, what if she was as loved as she did love. It would be some balm for her bruised soul, a ray of hope for her otherwise graying horizon.
I love movies that treat you as an intelligent audience, that do not spoon feed and tell you in as many words - This is how it ends. Lootera does just that. In the climax, when Pakhi walks out and sees the painted leaf tied to the branch and lets out that laughter - no words, no dialogues, just happiness and release. Memories of how she told Varun she can't ever paint leaves and how he promised he'd paint a masterpiece someday. Here she was, looking at it - a symbol of hope and of his love for her. A symbol of the masterpiece she would never forget. I do not know if she lived or died afterward, but what is important is that the leaf brought back a smile which you don't see since half-time of the movie and hope to wake up another day - leaf or not. Varun meets his end and accepts it wide arms - his purpose in life seems to be fulfilled with Pakhi less miserable.
A lot of people who saw the movie found it slow and boring. I for my part, found it fine paced. It reminded me of reading of such romance in books. There is beauty in each line, in each page. The movie makes you believe in the kind of love you forget in a world like the one we live in. Fast-paced, gadget-ridden, mortgages, office chores, household chores. Where does anyone have the time for romance nowadays? People fire-fight, more than they bring a warm smile to someone's eyes. In an era like this, movies such as Lootera offer an escape - to a more beautiful world, of a more beautiful love, of a better yesterday in a certain sense.
