Imtiaz Ali's Tamasha sets the Indian lover free
By now, the average Indian has been so exposed to the love stories of Heer-Ranjha, Sohni-Mahiwal, and Romeo-Juliet, that to make another love story would be completely futile for a creative mind. What use - the writer must ask himself - will that be? Love stories have become formulaic, much like our post-Partition narrative where our grandparents rebuilt their lives after losing everything and their children followed their dictums word by word.
In fact, it wasn't until the third generation after the independence - to which Imtiaz Ali belongs - that the Indian mind began to be aware of its surroundings and asked Why? Why must we be this and not that? Must we collaborate with our previous generations in sustaining the sham stability? Must we give in to the parental prescription of a trite safe life? Are we who are?
After a really long time in Indian history, Indians are asking: what do we want? What is our story?
In Tamasha, Imtiaz Ali has portrayed this angst of contemporary India through a story that explores both love and imagination and the question of personal freedom that connects the two. In Ali's Tamasha, there is a scene in which Ved (Ranbir Kapoor) in the moment of crisis heads out to the storyteller to complete his story. The impatient storyteller tells him to stop being an imposter and go write his own story. It is the first time in Indian storytelling, as far as I know, be it Ranjha, Mahiwal or Farhad has been handed the reins to decide what he wants. In doing so, Imtiaz Ali has liberated the Indian lover from the trappings of the ancient love story that was born in different circumstances in a different India.
Jose Ortega y Gasset, a Spanish philosopher and essayist, in an essay titled History as a System (1936) discussed man's duty to make himself. He wrote, "It is too often forgotten that man is impossible without imagination, without the capacity to invent for himself a conception of life, to "ideate" the character he is going to be. Whether he is original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself... Among... possibilities I must choose." In fact his assertion of the man choosing to be who wants to be is close to Sartre who said that "man turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself". Similarly, Ved, like Sartre's existential hero, asks himself in the mirror: Why should he go on living the way he does? Is his love story possible without narrative freedom? Only when he accepts the ability to choose, Ved begins to exist.
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Fiction depends on pre-programmed expectations of the reader or the audience. This degree of rigidity in drama is one of themost convenient tools of a storyteller (and also of life which finds gratification in predictability). Thus, when Imtiaz Ali explicitly shows irritation of an aging storyteller who, when mixing one story with the other says to young Ved, "what does it matter?" we should be in no doubt that Imtiaz Ali knows what he is doing. In Tamasha, he combines a love story with a bildungsroman and in doing so, he is saving the protagonist, as well as the audience, from the soul-crushing regularity with which we live our lives and consume our stories.
There are several interpretations possible to Imtiaz Ali's creation. The lover will see a love-story, the artist a meta-narrative of creation, the repressed man will take moral courage to pursue his dreams. All in all, Imtiaz Ali deftly combines multiple dramatic questions into a single narrative. That is not to say movie is flawless. Some may find shifting of storylines confusing, others may point fingers at his need to seemingly over-explain through songs and sign boards.
Audience may also be disappointed with the lack of clarity for the female protagonist. Her motives remain unclear throughout the movie except that she helps Ved in his self-discovery (Although, Deepika Padukone captures the fragile contours of her character perfectly). The transformation of the father is hastily executed - perhaps to favour the preferred dramatic end.
Thus, audience that comes to Tamasha looking for good old tamasha - much like many reviewers - may be disappointed. For Tamasha is a movie that defies schematic expectations of the mass audience. At times self-aware, at times mocking with random conformity, Imtiaz Ali has caught us off-guard. His accomplice is Ranbir Kapoor who seems to be asking his audience what is it that they want out of him? He speaks to us frankly and reclaims himself as an actor par excellence. Overall, Tamasha is imbued with intellectual honesty. And for that alone, it deserves applause.
Three cheers for both Tamasha and Ali's flair for movie matargashti.