Raanjhanaa | Bollywood Film | Hindi Movie | Personal Reviews

There remains a mystery that most of the famous and popular love stories remain incomplete (in the term that the lovers do not meet forever to live together)! Be it Laila-Majnu, Heer-Ranjha, Romeo-Juliet or any other, the fate of their love story is a sad end. The movie Raanjhanaa (a modified version of word Ranjha) definitely have to follow the same path, as the name suggests!

The movie is packed with some stunning performances. Dhanush, playing the protagonist delivers a remarkable performance and stands out. He looks unconventional for typical Hindi film hero, but his looks are suitable to the role he is playing. He, justifies young age with his reduced weight and grown up look by having beard, convincingly.

Sonam Kapoor is his match for sure (for this movie). She however may not look that much convincing as young girl, but with the progress of her character, she justifies various looks and emotions. Abhay is a nice actor as we know and he performs well yet again. He didn’t get much of the dramatic scenes and need to underplay at places, which he does.

The sets and locales are the heart of the film. Varanasi aka Banaras is explored well. Cinematographer deserves a mention for his work for sure. The songs are not as good as they should, especially in a love story like this. We are well aware of importance of songs in Laila-Majnu, Sohni-Mahival, Ek Duje Ke Liye and other similar (sad) love stories. The background music is the positive point of the movie. The dialogs are simple yet good. The screenplay weaves the political situations and development pretty well in the story.

The current time we are living in is changed so much that such sad love stories are not the – in thing. This works both in favor of and against the movie. Some people may like the movie very much, which others may find it depressing, slow and out of pace. Now people are used to with the short length of the film and this one is quite lengthy.

If you want to categorize this movie, it is similar to Mausam (in terms of treatment). The director know his job and performs well. Mind it, that the movie is not an easy watch! The characters are not ideal as found in book. They are having their negative sides also. Be it Zoya (Sonam) or Kundan (Dhanush), they does wrong things, they makes mistakes, they may not be likable at places. But, this is how we find people in our surrounding. As per the famous saying we know that – Nobody is perfect. There are shades of gray in everyone of us. But the real character of a person comes out during the most challenging times, and that is what makes him/her far different than the others! The director took care of such real developments.

Let us dig a little into the story of the movie. Kundan is a young Tamil Brahmin boy whose father is a priest. One day he see a young Muslim girl named Zoya and gets attracted towards her. They were kids though, and both belongs to the different communities, as we know now. Zoya’s father is a professor. Kundan, desperate to be near to Zoya, tries several things and he got slapped also several times. However his affection for Zoya remains unaffected and consistent over the period of time and Zoya got impressed with the same. She also now befriends with Kundan.

Zoya’s family is orthodox and we know by now that they will never let her be united with someone who is not from her cast. One day Zoya moves to Aligadh for further studies and she got an admission in JNU. Kundan keeps in touch of her family and helps them with several work and got entered in their good books. In JNU Zoya found some other aspects of the life and her own persona. She have wrong times with Akram Zaidi – a student leader, which later becomes her love interest!

After a long period of 8 years when she returns to her home-town, her world is changed completely. Now what? What would be Kundan’s reaction when he will got to know this? The path for Zoya and Akram seems pretty clear as they both belongs to the same community right? Will it be smooth for them? All can be explored in the rest of the movie.

The movie have several positive points as mentioned earlier, but go for that only if you like sad movies and such love stories are your cup-of-tea.

Interesting Information:

• Shahid Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha were signed in to be the lead pair in the movie earlier. But the characters were rather complex and director doubted that the pair will be able to explore the depth. The pair however was seen in a recent movie R…Rajkumar.
• Aditi Rao Hyderi was considered for the role played by Swara Bhaskar