Review : Aaj Kal, an ode to Love...

Love Aaj Kal, in a nutshell, begins by defining the difference between Love Aaj and Love Kal, in the voices and ideas of Jai (Saif Ali Khan) and Veer Singh (Rishi Kapoor), and as it proceeds towards the end, establishes effectively how the different loves of Aaj and Kal, are not so different after all...the one statement that the film makes most powerfully is that love is just love...it is not defined by notions of time and space...infact, it is not defined at all...and it is just this lack of definition that lends it the quality which makes it universal and eternal...whether you are in an old world purani Dilli and Calcutta, or the new-age San Francisco and New Delhi, the emotion behind what you feel for a person remains quite the same...and so, when Jai says to his girlfriend Jo, "Love? who knows what that is? i haven't figured that one out yet, i'm sorry..." you realise that the beauty of love is that it means different things to different people, and yet the central emotion stands uniform...that when two souls forge a bond, time and space cease to matter...

although there are times in the film where you are overcome by a certain sense of unreality...but one thing that overshadows even that sense is the purity of the characters...these are people, real people, who are not heroes or martyrs or cool-dudes who couldn't care less about a break-up or two, or self-righteous women who give their career priority over everything ...they're just human...and that's the beauty of the characters Imtiaz Ali drwas out for the viewer in startling detail...they're not straight cut figures in a fantasy world...they have many different dimensions to them...and he explores many of these so poignantly that you give in to that sense of being lost in a particular character's self, forgetting about the rest of the world...one scene that comes to mind when i say this is when Meera (Deepika Padukone) summons Jai to her backyard for a private conversation on the night of her marriage...i think Saif excelled in that scene, as he sped towards her saying that she doesn't need to worry, he's absolutely okay with all this...and while he's offering her platitudes almost as though he's offering them to himself, his speech becomes a direct medium of his train of thought...that one-sided conversation with Meera is a direct expression ofthe conflict raging within him, as he struggles to understand why watching her leave his life causes him so much pain...and by the end of his own monologue, it hits him like a solid wall, as he asks her softly, in an appalled, disbelieving whisper, "are you married Meera?" and can't bring himself to admit that she's gone, eventhough her going was inevitable...

the Love Kal track has it's own moments, filled with the charm of old world romance, as we move into a sepia-tinted world of the past, where speech is rendered irrelevant, as the eyes do most of the talking...where a man collects all the money he can to afford a ticket to a distant city, just to catch a glimpse of the woman he loves...and a glimpse is all he wants, no more...that bit has some very beautiful little moments, like when she sees him standing below her balcony with a tattered suitcase, she smuggles a glass of his favourite black tea under her dupatta and leaves it on a ledge for him to drink where no one sees her place it...and eventually, you see the parallels appearing between the two loves, as Aaj and Kal begins to share moments...and so, when Harleen Kaur drinks that cup of black tea and Meera sips that mug of black coffee, you realise that the sentiment behind both the acts is the same...they're both attempting to recreate the sense of their love in themselves...trying to create their love's presence when he's irrevocably and immeasurably distant from them, whether due to family objections or due to a lack of understanding of their love itself...

the movie brings out that love is complicated, because people are complicated...in their own distinct ways in distinct ages...times may change, entire generations may change, but there are some things that retain a single essense common to all...which is what makes life worth living...and which is what makes life what it is, really...for you, for me, for everybody...

Saif delivers a brilliant performance as both the young sardar, Veer Singh as well as the new age dude, Jai Vardhan Singh...he does really well through both halves, beautifully conveying Veer's quiet passion, his anguish, and his resolution as he makes his pratigya...this is the woman he will marry, and no one can get in his love's way...and parallel to that he breezes through the first nonchalant, then highly confused, and evetually deeply distraught Jai who attempts to find himself just as he attempts to find the cause of so much pain...Deepika delivers a very convincing performance in the second half...the first half, especially the initial bit leaves one asking for some more...there are bits in there where she looks like she's acting...but she does brilliantly in the second half as the slightly lost, and also deeply pained Meera, who takes a while to understand her love, and then resigns it to fate as she sees Jai's dreams coming true, waiting for him to understand it himself...Rishi Kappor is a perfect addition to the cast as the old Veer Singh...Rahul Khanna appears for a little too short a guest appearence as Vikram...but his character is also essential to the script...and perhaps any more of him would have caused too many breaks in the progress of the story as well as the characters...

all in all, i thought Love Aaj Kal was like an ode to Love on the silver screen, through the story of two couples, over two generations, tied together by the same thread, and defined by the same emotion...

cheers! 😃