Som

Ranbir-Sonam’s debut film has mistakes, which could have been easily avoided
That Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s latest is adapted from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short story – White Nights – is by now a known fact. Dostoevsky was part of a literary movement called Russian Formalism, which aimed at (among other things) achieving defamiliarisarion by ‘manipulating composition and narrative’. It is a similar technique that Bhansali attempts to use in his adapted screenplay. The almost-alienlike sets, which have come under a lot of flak are part of this attempt. While one may not have had so much of an issue with this aspect of the film, fact remains that Bhansali could have tread the thin red line a little more carefully. In attempting to defamiliarise the audiences tries to take them into an-almost surreal world. However in more ways than one, you find resemblences of our world in Bhansali’s imaginary homeland.

While at no point any character reveals the time and space in which Saawariya has been set, certain aspects of the film give out the secret. And these it is these few shots that deconstruct Saawariya; make it fall apart, so to say.

The first blooper (for the want of any other word) is when Imaan (Salman Khan) walks up to Sakina (Sonam) with a wad of currency notes, which are present-day hundred-rupee notes. If one goes by this little indication, the film is set in present-day India and as far as we know, no one dresses as either Ranbir and Sonam in our country any more. Besides, the backbreaking efforts that have gone into making the film’s sets also seem redundant. Because the entire architecture then seems a put on.

Then again, Sakina shows Raj a coin, which Imaan has given her as a ‘muh dikhai’ (a gesture of sorts for seeing her). The coin is clearly from the British-ruled India, a fact which is given away thanks to the close-up on it. Needless to say, it’s a contradiction to the first wad of notes, which belong to the present day.

They say you need a willing suspension of disbelief while appreciating literature. The problem is, even though Bhansali may want to believe it. Saawariya is not a piece of literature. It’s just another film good in parts and bad in just as many.