Review : Aisha

Aisha

Director : Rajshree Ojha

Writing credits : Jane Austen (Novel); Devika Bhagat (Screenplay); Devika Bhagat, Ritu Bhatia & Manu Rishi (Dialogues)

Music : Amit Trivedi

Cast : Sonam Kapoor, Abhay Deol, Ira Dubey, Amrita Puri, Cyrus Sahukar, Arunoday Singh, Lisa Haydon

What goes for the film : Misplaced gloss & glitter, if it works for you, some good performances

What goes against the audience : Abominable writing & direction

Cinemaa Opinion : Listen to the music at home; don’t waste money on tickets and your time on the film. Scroll down for a detailed review.

Aishouch!!

To restate a literary work set in the 19^th century England through a film set in 21^st Delhi requires finesse & depth – both at the intellectual as well as emotional level. One needs to have a fair understanding of the social values & psychological structures relevant to the time and place of the source as well as the adaptation. Debutante Rajshree Ojha’s Aisha is an adaptation of Jane Austen’s evergreen novel Emma, set in modern day Delhi. This abomination of an adaptation would have been inexcusable had the film not so overtly given away the fact that the combined IQ of the brains behind this project didn’t exceed that of Google Transliterate.

The characters are photostats, or shall I say cyclostyles (inferior quality copies that the email generation might barely be aware of) of the original. The meddlesome & dominating Emma Woodhouse (Sonam Kapoor’s Aisha), the level-headed George Knightley (Abhay Deol’s Arjun), the lovestruck Philip Elton (Cyrus Sahukar’s Randhir Gambhir), the “downmarket” Harriet Smith (Amrita Puri’s Shefali) & the sauve Frank Churchill (Arunoday Singh’s Dhruv) are there, alright. The plot flows about in an dragging & manipulative manner. By interval, the cupid lines were quite predictable and there wasn’t a single surprise thereafter. The settings are fake, contrived and irritating with their high glitter quotient. Pinky Bose (Ira Dubey), the wannabe Elle editor and the film’s clichéd cynic quips in the film, “We’re not in a fairytale, we’re in Delhi”. Given her sarcastic tone, the statement ironically turns out to be a searing indictment of the “Delhi” of Aisha. The city and its rich folk as displayed in the film resemble what someone like a Shefali would imagine the world of Aisha, Pinky etc. to be like.

The lives of the corporate slaves in the film, Arjun & Arti would make even today’s freelancers go green with envy. They take off on random rafting trips; they both take long leaves to celebrate a new arrival in the family of Arjun’s brother and even when they’re in office, they hardly look like they’re working. The rich welcome a Behenji from Bahadurgarh (with an obnoxious literal reference thrown in for good measure) with open arms, spending thousands on her wardrobe without as much as flinching an eyelid. They dress up for a polo match as if it were the Royal Ascot Derby. All this points more towards Edwardian England when the dividing lines were drawn according to the socio-economic class rather than modern day Delhi, where the rich class is coccoonised in their  Z-grade security bunkers and their Lutyens’ Delhi bungalows and the dividing lines are based more on the superficial “style quotient”. It’s a different matter altogether that the polo is choreographed more like a cross between the Jhaveri sisters’ Manipuri dance and an Astad Deboo freeform.

For the sake of argument, even if one were to take the depiction of Delhi as an artistic liberty, there’s no dearth of pointers towards the lack of intelligence and application in the making of Aisha. The source was a great piece of satire on the shallow morality of the English gentry of those days. This was achieved through intricately written characters and exquisitely detailed relationships. For example, the depth in the father-daughter relationship and the engaging debates on morality between Mr.Knightley and Ms.Woodhouse. The adaptation leaves no room for character studies and relies more on forced and manipulative maneuvers than on actual substance. The relationship between the father and daughter is reduced to some banal everyday exchanges and that between the two leads reeks of the typical tu-tu-main-main of a clichéd bollywood romcom. Coming to think of it, the supposedly manipulative Aisha is no match for the combined manipulative finesse of the scriptwriter and director.  Worst of all, the film meanders along, repeating the same vignettes that merely keep re-establishing the characters, over and over again. A colossal bore.

Actors can do only as much as their characters and the film’s script permit them, especially actors without exceptional natural talent. The case with Aisha demonstrates this perfectly. All the actors have put in honest and sincere efforts that show, but they’re let down bigtime by the flawed writing and direction. Abhay Deol, Cyrus Sahukar & Amrita Puri are especially delightful and it’s a pity that such good performances were wasted on a shoddy execution. The film lays a huge stress on its style quotient, which is quite pertinent to the subject. However, thinking that the high style can substitute for substantial writing is a huge folly.

This is the first time in my life that I actually waited for the next song to start in a film. Yes, Amit Trivedi lines up another winner. The music of the film is arguably the best of the year so far.  And if you really value my opinion, I suggest looping the songs of the film for 2+ hours instead of wasting your time watching the film. You save on money and also have the option of being productive at the same time.