Jab Tak Hai Jaan: Ab tak hai jaan

Starring: Shah Rukh Khan, Katrina Kaif, Anushka Sharma
At: PVR & others
Rated: 7/10

It is an unreal romance, seemingly illogical, somewhat unreasonable and a tad regressive too. It is not top of the line Yash Chopra either. And considering that the crescendo wizard AR Rahman made the music, you can call it muted. Gulzar, too, has written much better lyrics than he does forJab Tak Hai Jaan.

So the obvious conclusion would be that this is an unusually flat one from the House of YRF. An aged swan song by the one and only king of romance Yash Chopra — a little bit of everything, yet not really anything.

But wait. If you rush to conclusions, you will go absolutely wrong. For, the truth is that despite a varying degree of all the above hometruths put together, Jab Tak Hai Jaan is strangely gripping, a slow and steady winner that rings in old-world romance after a long gap — clean, intense, unpretentious and completely engaging despite the strange promises it makes to God and stranger reactions of constant fatality it evokes in its lead character Shah Rukh Khan aka Samar Anand.

So is it Yash Chopra’s movie or SRK’s? At the age of 28, he fights the wrinkles with unusual elan but it is his 38-year-old persona of a Major in the Indian Army that takes your breath away. As a bomb diffuser in J&K, SRK shines as never before in his fatigue, his rugged beard, his hardened mannerisms and his outrageously brave courting of death. Yes, in the hands of Yash Chopra, he is a man that can never die, a romantic that brings back the heartbeat that tugs, the star that stamps his presence all over you. And thankfully for the movie, much of it pans out on this rakishly handsome Major who towers over your emotions as Discovery documentary film-maker Anushka Sharma tells you time and again.

Coming to the love story which is the crux of Chopraism, yes it is entirely old world yet its beauty lies in the fact that both men and women of varying ages get drawn into its proceedings, and not entirely because they couldn’t get over the raw sexiness of a sizzling dance session Katrina Kaif gives one night in a dress smaller than the snow drops that fall into her cleavage on the night streets of London. This time, Yash Chopra gives intense sentimentality a precedence over sheer chemistry, the chiffon saree in Swiss climes a miss for slinky westerns in chic London and a tugging romance whose time has not come sole attention over any other brand of love he has propelled in his long career so far. Those promises to God, those challenges to Jesus, that resignation around unrequited love — Chopra showcases all shades in an uncomplicated, beautiful shroud of mushiness that today’s generation may just not find the time to nuance. But then Yash Chopra is never for the teeny-boppers. For that kind, go to his son Aditya who will do aDhoom for you. This one is about feeling that emotion that bloomed much before a generational change gave it the tag of a second hand emotion.

And as all Yash Chopra movies are, this one too comes wrapped in comfort props — like the ultimate diva in Katrina, a chirpy counterfoil in a much younger Anushka, the ageless and unadulterated chemistry that King Khan brings to the screen with his dimpled presence and uniquely endearing mannerisms, the locales that recline sexily on the gentle green slopes of the Kashmir Valley, proceedings that get pepped up in a happening London and a rawness of emotion that thrives on the nude landscape of Ladakh.

In short, JTHJ is a slow gripper despite all odds, a romance whose time, Yash Chopra would say, is yet to come. On way to a classic in the coming years.

Source:  The Pioneer, Nov, 15,2012