HELPLESS IN HINTERLAND

Most films have some sort of an ending. By some sort I mean to say that a films ending can be predicted from its first frame, but the director and the writers employ different methods to not to give away what the ending is.

But Tanu Weds Manu spells out the entire story along with the ending in its title, it would be interesting if other filmmakers have done the same, giving us the opportunity to know the ending by the title we would never have walked up to the counter to buy a ticket.

People with nostalgia always have the upper hand when it comes to creation, here director Anand Rai employs the remembrance of classic Hindi film music as a non continuous theme. The protagonist Manu Sharma is seen hearing to Mohd Rafi songs craving to see the face of his lady love in the moon when his trusted side kick asks him as to how he keeps listening to songs of yore even after spending more than a decade in London. The music doesn’t stop there, even while playing antakshari in one of the pre wedding night games they sing the Hum Dono classic ‘abhi na jao chodkar’ in almost poetic concurrence if you don’t mind the real life voice of Kangana Ranaut, elsewhere the heroine remembers a steaming hot Sridevi number in similar circumstances.

The reasons I have always wondered for such personal choices have not always been a peep into the tastes of the director but a sort of sharing with the audience which also takes them back to their remembrances, whatever song or incident. Sometime during the course of such an experience we tend to migrate to our own life and forget screen happenings, this brings personal connection between the story teller and the listener; young boys and girls (or once boys and girls) might recall that old people often have the protagonists as young boys/girls to bring the audience into the story.

In the case of Tanu Weds Manu, this is hardly a problem because the movie is about Indian weddings, a theme visited and revisited over the decades. But it works, it has been sometime since I did watch a movie with a constant smile on my face and it reminded me of Mouna Ragam for a good part of the first half, the characterization of the lead being polar opposites and the supporting cast at their witty best.

Then the film somehow goes downhill, what started out as a brilliant first half with lines like “where do these people come from, these London returns” falls into the vicious circle of a love triangle ( see how cleverly I have used two shapes in one sentence, mother I am improving!) with the introduction of a gun clasping riotous gangster cum ex-lover Shiney Ahuja as Raja.

The lead characters then become helpless in their respective circles, Madhavan as Manu is unable to express his love, while Manu is helpless in forgoing her free spirit attitude towards life and the story becomes helplessly helpless. But apart from all this Tanu Weds Manu retains its core Indian urban and  suburban-ness, which is not something which is derived but something which comes naturally to the director and appends charm, that is why I think the movie is sweet and I am willing to see beyond the faults. So what if we know the ending?