Taal

This film only confirmed my theory that Western enthusiasm for Indian films didn't erupt with Lagaan in 2001 by accident. My humble experience with older Indian films so far has been in the same negative vein. Taal, like Straight from the Heart for example, is advertised as an award-winning spectacle with A-list stars, fabulous music, a great director, impeccable choreography, etc. But all I see are films from a completely different world, having nothing in common with the current ones, which I am literally in love with. I'm not entirely certain about what has changed over the past few years, but it is very clear that it has been for the better. Even in the late 1990s/early 2000s, my impression of Indian films is as awkward as what I thought of the former Eastern Bloc countries in the late 1980s/early 1990s, which were still finding their feet in the new democratic republics. The aesthetic oscillates somewhere between the reverberations of The Band and the early enthusiasm for MTV, which in and of itself is very alien to me. Coca-Cola's product placement also seems to be from another century and they even failed to effectively handle the message about Miss World, who Aishwarya Rai indeed was in 1994, but whom her film version of Mansi did not even remotely resemble. The 179-minute runtime is filled with two stories that shouldn't be mutually exclusive, but here they just bump into each other... The classic problems of the conflict of young love between a girl from the village living only with her relatives are put to the test in a completely different world in the capital. After she is betrayed by her lover, she unexpectedly becomes an MTV star, and as if by chance it was supposed to be a great reminiscence of the popular "A Star is Born" plot, but that doesn't happen. Awkwardness is only replaced by more awkwardness. Although at the very end, of course, the "right" lovers find themselves in each other's arms, it's not very satisfying, especially when their shared path to happiness is lined with so many insurmountable issues. The first of these is the irreconcilable father-brothers, the second is Anil Kapoor's incredibly ridiculous overacting, the third is Akshay Khanna's absurdly illogical behavior and the fourth is the script, just to make matters worse. The young Aishwarya Rai was also not asked to act much, so she doesn't have much to impress us with other than the yoga and dance scenes. Fortunately, I've seen the main trio in much better roles and films, so I have no reason to condemn them. I'm just dreading what else I'll find in the drawer with the Indian film 1913-2000 column. (09/22/2010)