SAAWARIYA - Blu-ray review

Sony has long been a player in the Chinese-language film industry, but "Saawariya" marks their first venture into the Bollywood market. In one of two scant bonus features here, we're told that over the past 87 years the Indian film industry has cranked out 40,000 movies. That's roughly 460 films per year--which begs the question, why would Sony's first backing go to Sanjay Leela Bhansali, a filmmaker who, before "Saawariya," had directed just four films in nine years? Well, probably because Bhansali's "Black" (2005) was hailed as a milestone for a film industry that had been using recycled plots and love-story conventions as little more than an excuse to showcase songs and dances. Bhansali wasn't afraid to do things a little differently.

"Black" and Bhansalil's "Devdas" (2002) were both well received, but it's not as if bankrolling him would guarantee success for this important Holly/Bolly collaboration. "Saawariya" is being billed as "Bollywood filmmaking at its best," and yet the screenplay by Prakesh Kapadia ("Black," "Devdas") offers an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "White Nights," rather than the typical Indian love story. And instead of a lot of big production numbers with colorful Indian backdrops, we get fewer big numbers and a stylized set reminiscent of the old Hollywood musicals from the back-lot era, shot almost entirely "at night" and in near-monochromatic scenes of blue, green, and black. Like the dream sequences in a Gene Kelly film, the set is clearly staged, not cinematic, with the emphasis on several brightly-lit business signs in each, with additional holiday lighting along bridges and via candles.

It's the eve of Eid ul-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that signifies the end of Ramadan, and in a red-light district a narrator tells us the story we're about to hear might just be a dream, which, of course, explains the dreamlike sets. She's an attractive young woman of ill repute known as Gulabji (Rani Mukherjee), named for the syrupy sweet Indian dessert gulab jamun--which is like being called "Candy" in a Western film. She's the clichéd hooker with the heart of gold who works at the RK Bar, and some of the scenes and situations will remind viewers a bit of "Moulin Rouge!" The other main female character is a "good girl" named Sakina (Sonam Kapoor). Dostoevsky's story and Kapadia's screenplay takes place over four nights, with a lonely young man meeting Gulabji and befriending her . . . and, in fact, acting like a magical balm for all the sad women of the red light district. He wipes their tears, he sings to them as if he were a cheesy Elvis, and in this entire town it seems as if he's the only male for a time, and he ministers to all the women like an angel. The weird thing is, he dresses a bit like a European mime, complete with horizontal-striped shirt and bowler hat. Like Elvis, he ends up getting a job as a guitar-playing singer at the RK Bar, but he's a bit too goofy to be a real ladies man like the King, and his songs, gestures, and choreography are so cheesy that it makes Tom Jones look like a classical artist by comparison. When he meets Sakina and pursues her, it's a clear case of the nice guy /sad clown not being able to get the girl he likes, because she likes the bad boy instead. In this case, it's a merchant-marine type fellow named Imaan (Salman Khan) from her shadowy past, who has about as much depth and time onstage as a shadow. We watch the clown try to woo the good girl, while remaining friends with the bad girl and wondering what in the world the good girl sees in the bad boy, because none of it is developed.

Story isn't a strong point for this film. Style is, and by style I mean the visual look that the film has. The characters themselves are nothing more than stock or "type" characters, with the good guy pining for the good girl who'd rather have the bad boy, and the bad girl secretly wishing the good guy could be hers. It doesn't get any deeper than that. In fact, the relationship that's explored the most in this film is between good-guy Raj (Ranbir Kapoor) and his landlady (Zohra Sehgal), who "adopts" him as the son who left her 37 years ago. And at times, her character does some very odd things.

If you haven't seen any other Indian films, I'm not sure this is the place to start. For one thing, the sets have a highly European look to them. What drove the other Bollywood films I've seen was flirtation and inaccessible love, as well as hovering insistent parents and big production numbers and dances. Here, there's a lot more in the way of solo numbers, and Ranbir Kapoor's character is all over the tonal map. One minute he's doing it straight, the next minute he's clowning around or doing pratfalls. And cheesy? If this guy were on "American Idol," I shudder to think what Simon Cowell would say about the way he seems to evoke the worst of what every gold-necklace-wearing lounge lizard has to offer.

Plot-wise, there's just no reason why Sakina would go for Imaan, much less pine for him. He comes across as a clichéd embodiment of evil, dressed all in black and overacting the bad-guy part. We have practically nothing more to evaluate him except for a night when we see her go to him in fascination. But why? It's like watching "Carousel," or a Gene Kelly movie where Kelly is a mime who acts like a sad clown and seeing him compete with the memory and ever-present possibility of the return of James Dean. It doesn't make sense, and scenes and sequences go on so long with the same sort of unrequited love business that the film's 138 minutes seem REALLY long. The saving grace is that with all the tonal inconsistency and, well, just plain goofiness there's a lot to laugh at--more, I suspect, than was intended. I don't know Hindi and so I can't comment on the quality of translation, but some of Sameer's lyrics will make Western audiences smile-as in one song when one of the women sings about a man and strings together words like "mod, handsome, showy, lively . . . graceful, stubborn, pants are loose." Pants are loose? Or another song where he sings to she, "You tantalize my breath, you are my adornment."

While I can appreciate that it's a little daring to shoot a film that's so theatrical in its look and rely on a script that sets every scene but one in stylized darkness, "Saawariya" plays like one long dream sequence from an old-time Hollywood musical. And those dream sequences just don't play well for audiences today. If you're wanting to check out what Bollywood has to offer, a better place to start is "Bride and Prejudice," Gurinder Chadha's 2004 take on the Jane Austen novel. It's more tonally consistent, the cheese factor is mercifully diminished, and there's an energy that "Saawariya" seems to lack. Maybe Sony should try bankrolling Chadha next.

Video:
Visually, "Saawariya" is stunning to watch, and that's one of the film's saving graces. Visual style is its chief strength, and in 1080p (AVC/MPEG-4 codec) it looks great, especially presented in 2.40:1 widescreen on a 50-gig disc. Black levels are really strong and sharp, and that's essential for a film with so many monochromatic sequences if we're going to see any detail at all. It's a brilliantly sharp picture that's most noticeable during those shots when we see water lilies floating or a bridge and its lights reflected in the tranquil water. Great picture.

Audio:
Here too, the Hindi Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack is top-notch, with a deep, rich bass and a nice spread of sound across the front speakers. During the musical numbers it seems as if most of the sound comes "concert style" from the front main and center speakers with only a little of the music channeled to the rear, but that would be my only complaint, and it's a "soft" one. It's something you notice, but nothing that defies logic or takes away from the experience. There's also an English Descriptive Audio 5.1 track which is for the visually impaired, describing what's being seen rather than what's being said or sung. As for subtitles, there are a bunch of options: English, English SDH, French, Spanish (Latin American), Spanish (Castilian), Portuguese (Brazilian), Chinese, Czech, Korean, Thai, Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hindi, German, Turkish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Bulgarian, and Portuguese (Classic). Sorry, no Klingon.

My only complaint about the subtitles is that we get English subtitles even when the speaker lapses into English, and the main English subtitle track doubles as a track for the hearing impaired with descriptions of laughter and musical notes. It can be a distraction until you get used to it.

Extras:
For a big-deal release that's been delayed for months, it's a bit of a surprise that there are just two short bonus features--"Making the Music" featurette and "Premiere Night Footage--and there's considerable overlapping between the two. It's mostly laudatory stuff and the equivalent of a Sundance stage event meeting an Oscar Red Carpet. You'll be introduced to a relative newcomer to creating music for Indian film (Monty Sharma) and "ace lyricist Sameer." But there's no real information here.

Bottom Line:
"Saawariya" is a stylistic achievement, but a storytelling disappointment. And the music and dancing? You walk away wishing there had been more big production numbers and less of the sad clown/mime nonsense. Tonally, it's all over the place.