Thursday, November 24, 2016

Veer-Zaara (2004)


I credit Veer-Zaara with basically my entire Bollywood obsession. Ten years ago, my best friend and I ordered the dvd on the basis of a) Shahrukh Khan and b) the “Love Legend” tagline. We’d already watched Bride and Prejudice, which isn’t a very good movie, Devdas, which I hated, and Dil Se, which I really, really, did not get. Veer-Zaara was a good choice. Like Kandukondain, this movie is just as good ten years later. Maybe even better.

So we start with an absolutely standard romantic ballad in the yellow mustard, starring Shahrukh and an unknown woman. It’s not bad, but it’s not poignant until you’ve actually, you know, seen the whole movie.

After the credits, we meet Saamiya (Rani Mukerji), idealistic human rights lawyer in Pakistan. She’s been assigned her first case, an Indian prisoner who’s been in for 22 years. It’s probably an unwinnable case, since the man won’t speak. Until Saamiya addresses him as Veer Pratap Singh, previously of the Indian Air Force. And he tells his story.


Veer (Shahrukh, duh) was a rescue pilot with the Indian Air Force and it all started when he met a girl. A girl from Pakistan, spoiled and sheltered, and very beautiful, with a kind heart. Her father is a rich man, and has fixed her marriage with a political ally. Zaara is charming, because, well, she is played by Preity Zinta and there’s no way she couldn’t be. But her Bebe (Zohra Sehgal, the best grandmother Bollywood has ever known) passes away, and her dying wish is that her ashes be taken to Kiratpur, in India, to join her Sikh ancestors. So Zaara goes, alone, to India.


Her bathtub is the most amazing thing
Veer saves her life after her bus crashes. It’s as romantic as you can get, and hanging off a cliff together in a helicopter harness is exactly the emotionally heightened situation you need to start off a good love story. They have a misunderstanding, but Veer can’t forget about her, and accompanies her to Kiratpur. A patriotic and scenic interlude later, she fulfills her quest, and asks Veer what she can do for him in return.

He asks that she share one day with him. Unaware or unconcerned about the romantic consequences of such a beautiful request, she accepts.


It’s quite the trip. Busses, vegetable carts (the true message of Bollywood: anywhere you need to go, there will be a truck or cart full of vegetables to take you there) and a section on a swinging platform pulled across a river.


She meets and is quickly enveloped by the warmth of Veer’s family. I certainly had no idea who Hema Malini or Amitabh Bachchan were when I first watched this movie, but Maati and Bauji are the absolute best and it’s no wonder that Zaara basically adopts herself into their family. And then it’s time for the entertainment of the evening, Bauji and Maati bickering in joyous song!


And Veer for sure falls in love with Zaara.


But he’s not able to confess it until Zaara’s fiance Raza meets them at the train station. And thus, the doomed section of their love story begins. We're just coming up on intermission, after all.



Now it’s Zaara’s turn to recognize their doomed love. At her engagement, she sees visions of him around her, and I really like that her fantasies are much sexier than Veer’s fields of yellow flowers and chiming bangles.


So her companion Shabbo (Divya Dutta) calls Veer, and asks him how much he loves Zaara. So Veer goes to Pakistan, and plans to be at a shrine at the same time as Zaara and her family. And I really don’t know what he was hoping to accomplish, because unless he was planning to grab her and go right then, something this public in front of her parents and Raza was only going to make things worse. But that does not matter. I spend this scene looking exactly like Shabbo:


He strides up to her to the background of a beautiful qawwali and they embrace.


Yash Chopra, you guys. This is why he was a master. I could forgive a hundred Jab Tak Hai Jaan's just for this one scene.


Anyway, this goes over just about as well as you would expect. Zaara’s father becomes comatose from the shock, and her mother goes to Veer to beg him to leave Zaara for her father’s sake. He agrees, but not without offering a way out.


Raza’s reaction is to jail Veer and force him to be falsely imprisoned to save Zaara’s honor.

This kind of supposes that life with Raza could actually be happy
and I really don't think there's evidence for that.
And Zaara marries Raza for her father’s sake.


That brings us to the present day. The court case is not going well, and Veer refuses to let Saamiya contact Zaara or her family.

I'm not sure why she didn't think of this in the first place. 
And what a surprise Saamiya finds in India! A divorced Zaara teaching a girl's school in Maati and Bauji's village!


They reunite, and the judge frees Veer. Lata Mangeshkar was poorly matched with Preity’s peppy song in the beginning, but Tere Liye is right in her wheelhouse.

So, holy crap. This movie is amazing. It’s not perfect, but it’s still amazing.

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