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Umrao Jaan (2006) Director: J.P. Dutta Cast: Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan, Shabana Azmi, Sunil Shetty Time: 190 min. Hindi with English subtitles Rating: |
Umrao Jaan is a period-piece epic; hence, it has received epic treatment. It tells an epic story that offers no lofty ideas; it has epic dialogue that sounds embarrassingly stilted in English; it features epic characters who remain one dimensional; it presents epic actors who act stiff; it contains an epic number of songs whose sequences fail to hold the viewer’s interest; and it runs an epic 190 minutes that pass at a sometimes mind-numbing pace. At its best, Umrao Jaan is blandness on an epic scale.
The blame for this blandness should be given to director J.P. Dutta. He clearly reveres the original material (a nineteenth-century novel by Mizra Muhammad Hadi Ruswa) as a sacred text, which infuses the whole production with a seriousness that makes the film unnaturally uptight and self-conscious of its own grandiose scheme. The film glorifies Umrao Jaan because she has borne her personal tragedy gracefully and expresses her suffering through haunting poetry. As viewers, we must revere her as a saint for maintaining her dignity through the negation of her self.
Or at least that’s what Dutta expects us to believe. Like most sacred texts, belief rests entirely on faith: we must believe Umrao Jaan is worth 190 minutes of our lives because we are told to believe it. The script never really shows us why we should be so enamored of Umrao Jaan or why she is so special.
The story unfolds with Umrao Jaan (Rai) telling her woeful tale to the poet Mizra Ruswa (the novel’s author). She begins with her childhood as a girl named Ameeran, who is kidnapped and sold to a brothel where she is trained as a courtesan. We briefly glimpse her training and witness the evolution of her romance with Nawab Sultan (Bachchan). They make many vows of eternal love before they are separated and Umrao Jaan’s life completely unravels.
A tragic role such as this requires actors with screen presence and charisma. Yet despite her beauty, Aish lacks on-screen chemistry: with Abhishek, with the camera, and with the character she portrays. Two and a half hours of film unspool before she actually acts with even the slightest emotion, and ten minutes later, she begins overacting in grand Bollywood melodramatic fashion. Her lackluster performance is a huge disappointment.
The other actors are equally disappointing. Abhishek is completely under-used; the most director Dutta asks of him is to lie around and stare at Aish with a feigned passion that couldn’t melt an ice cube during the monsoon season. Sunil Shetty acts like a piece of animated wood as he struggles with the over-written dialogue. Only Shabana Azmi succeeds in delivering her lines with some believability.
Visually, the film is pleasant. One or two scenes are artfully shot, such as the scene with Aish lying on a bed weeping; the rest seem to have been assembled without much thought to their composition. But cinematographer Ayananka Bose has done a fantastic job to make Aish look stunning. Although many cinematographers light her improperly or shoot her from odd angles so that her jaw line appears weak, Bose hides that tiny physical flaw perfectly.
The most frustrating thing about Umrao Jaan is its aimlessness. The first half creates the expectation that we are witnessing an epic story of love triumphing over all obstacles, so we’re prepared for a resolution that unites the ill-fated lovers. Then, the second half descends into pathos as Umrao Jaan’s fortunes crumble and everyone she has ever cared for dies or abandons her. (We’re even treated to a few unnecessary moments of British raj brutality as Umrao Jaan loses even her country.) Nothing prepares us for this narrative arc, more like a downward spiral, and it does nothing more than muddle whatever themes the director was trying to present.
Overall, the first part of the film drags on endlessly, while second part snips away the plot threads as quickly as possible to rush toward the anti-climatic finish. Perhaps Umrao Jaan would have been more interesting had the entire production shown more spirit, but this particular jaan is not beloved and has no life.
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