Movies famously provide an escape from reality when times are tough, and without getting into too many details I'm not very happy these days. I spent a week and a half on jury duty on a really awful case that ended with an incredibly contentious deliberation and a verdict that involved a truly revolting moral compromise. Even before this I didn't have much faith in democracy as a system or in our societal institutions but right now, as I told a slightly alarmed friend the other night, my current state of mind makes David Simon look like a 6 year old waking up early on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought. I'm not saying we should nuke the United States to glass and call it a day, but you know. I'm not exactly in the mood to watch any hard-hitting dramas about abuse and injustice, let's put it that way.
Jaan-E-Mann, on the other hand, is exactly the kind of picture I'm in the mood for these days. The title in English translates to “sweetheart,” and wouldn't ya know, it's about two guys in love with the same girl. But that's like saying a string quartet is a couple schmucks with violins. Packed with metacinematic references (breaking the fourth wall so often the motherfucker simply isn't there anymore after about an hour) and featuring a number of excellent songs, Jaan-E-Mann is a totally compelling, vividly romantic movie. Amazingly, it's the directorial debut of Shirish Kunder, who also wrote (story, screenplay, and dialogues; the credits are separate in India), edited, and wrote some of the music. It's executed with such polish, its exuberance so controlled, its merging of form and content so harmonious, that it feels like the work of a veteran hitting his stride.
Before we continue, a brief aside on the difference between a movie star and an actor. I could do a whole post on this and bore the living fuck out of everyone but I'll reduce it to this maxim: movie stars can be good actors and actors can possess sufficient charisma to play leading roles, but you're either one or the other. It can be a fine distinction, and actually doesn't have much to do with talent, though “actors” tend to be better actors than “movie stars” (conversely, “movie stars” tend to be more charismatic, badass, sexy, etc than “actors”). Classifying someone as more of a movie star than an actor doesn't necessarily mean you're calling him or her a shitty actor. It just means they have that ineffable, unquantifiable “it” that makes movie magic.
This is a way of explaining that the other half of the equation that makes Jaan-E-Mann so enjoyable, and symbiotic with Shirish Kunder's inspired direction, is the presence of three movie stars of the caliber of Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, and Preity Zinta. Part of what makes all three of them so special is the absence of any gray area. When Salman Khan is awesome, he's more awesome than anyone ever (and, paradoxically, the same is true of Akshay). When he's in love, he's more in love than anyone ever. When Salman's heart is shattered, the lights go dark and the window behind him literally explodes; sure, that's Shirish being a wiseass, but the way Salman makes his eyes go big completes the effect. The window shattering was a directorial choice, but it doesn't work without Salman selling it.
I use Salman as an example, but Akshay and Preity are both operating on the same level. Akshay's more dorky than anyone ever, and more in love with Preity than anyone ever (just like Salman is; stupid paradoxes). Preity is—play on words coincidental—prettier than any girl ever, and more torn between the two men who love her than anyone ever. You get the point. It's a big romantic picture, the kind that makes you go ooh and ahh and cry and stuff. You need movie stars for that kind of thing, and these three are most definitely that.
The story is framed by astronaut Akshay Kumar telling his blonde cosmonaut companion—whose face we don't see just yet—that he's got to call his friend to wish him happy birthday. She points out that it's only 5 am in Mumbai and gets Akshay to explain just what's up, because he's acting a little weird. So, in flashback, Akshay starts telling her about his buddy Salman Khan, an aspiring actor madly in love with Preity, his college sweetheart (Ed. Note: that wording's ambiguous on purpose; this movie may not be subtle but I sure as shit am). Naturally, being Bollywood, there's a song, and there's this awesome bit in it where Salman and Preity are dancing around the set to various producers' offices, and only when Salman takes his shirt off does a producer give him a part. For the uninitiated, an explanation:
Over the course of the song, Salman and Preity get married. Eventually, though, the song ends and Salman's producer gives him an ultimatum: no one's gonna come to see the picture if the hero's married, numbnuts, you have to hide your marriage. Though it eats him up inside, Salman agrees, and he's in the process of packing his shit to go stay in a hotel or something til he's done shooting when Preity comes home with this big smile on her face about something or other (it's explained later), which suddenly turns into utter despair when she realizes he's leaving. So she flips out, not without good reason of course, and disappears. And Salman's picture flops, leaving him with no wife, no career, nothing but a big fuckin stack of unpaid bills and his dwarf lawyer, Anupam Kher (who isn't actually a dwarf, he was Parminder Nagra's dad in Bend it Like Beckham as well as zillions of Hindi pictures, and was normal height in all of them; this is just Shirish being a fuckin goofball again, and God bless that crazy bastard). Preity's suing Salman for 5 million rupees in alimony, and Salman's fucking like “what the fuck, dude, I don't have that kind of money, even though that's only like a hundred grand US, that's still a fuckin hundred grand! Anupam Kher, my trusted dwarf advisor, what the hell am I gonna do????” (Ed. Note: they don't curse in the scene, I was just having keyboard Tourettes). Anupam Kher, because he's awesome, pulls out a book labeled “Marriage Law” and finds a thing where if Preity gets married, Salman doesn't have to pay alimony. And they smile a schemer's smile and totally go “But where will we ever find such a man?” and right on cue, Akshay Kumar rings the doorbell.
Akshay, looking like the lost Turturro brother (no shit, for a second I was like, “Did John Turturro get Method as a fuck? No, that is Akshay . . . damn, that's eerie.”) barges in demanding to see Preity, because he's been in love with her since college and he finally grew a pair to go ask her if she wants to like hold hands or something but like only if she wants to because you know like. There's a bit of broad comedy between IRL buddies Akshay and Salman (especially since Salman was the guy who swept Preity off her feet on her first big date with Akshay; whoops), at the end of which Salman decides, he's going to take Akshay to New York City—where Preity's living now—and transform him into a Salman-esque sex bomb and help him woo Preity.
Here's the subjective part of me loving this movie so much: I wasn't expecting them to not only go to New York, but have Preity's apartment be on Cranberry St. in Brooklyn Heights, right by the Promenade. Shirish makes my hometown look good, too, and the locations are just the right mix of familiar to out-of-towners and not-yet-overused. A lot of the interiors are obviously shot in India, but seriously, who gives a fuck? Not me, that's for sure.
So Salman follows Akshay and Preity around on dates, in a variety of disguises (for obvious reasons), including an NYPD patrolman (Salman wears the uniform well, lemme tell ya) and, awesomely, Elvis. There's a great scene set at Tavern on the Green where Salman, as Elvis, hilariously embarasses the yutz who's trying to date Preity. Good times. Akshay and Salman become really good buddies and have some good chats about stuff, including one seemingly idle one about everyone in the world having not just one doppelganger but several.
Of course, anyone who's ever seen a romantic movie sees what's coming a mile away: Salman's (obviously) not over Preity yet, and there's gonna come a point where he either undercuts or abandons Akshay—who does a magnificent job of playing a hapless nerd in this, his laugh is one of the no-pussy-gettingest things that's ever existed—but because Jaan-E-Mann is a good movie, the reason why comes as a surprise. It turns out, when Preity came home all smiley that day Salman was packing his shit to take off back in Mumbai? She'd just come back from her doctor and found out she was pregnant with their child. Who Salman, in spying on Preity in aid of his marry-her-off-to-Akshay scheme, sees. And realizes everything.
Thus kicks off the last hour of the movie, with Salman walking around crying. Akshay accidentally proposes to Preity, and her family—including her roid monkey asshole brother—loves Akshay so they pressure Preity into marrying him, and Salman finds out and starts crying even more, and then Akshay finds out that Preity's asshole roid monkey brother hid a whole big fistful of “my darling I love you with all my heart” letters from Salman from her, and when Akshay reads them he's like “I must step aside for my friend” and he starts crying, and then Preity reads the letters and she's like “Salman always loved me!” and she starts crying (Ed. Note: by this point, don't front, so are you) and Salman's even done that turn he always does where he renounces his irresponsible ways and decides to better himself, where his charisma (JALWA! JALWA!) reaches uncharted territory—dude fuckin smolders when he gets passionate, no two ways about it—and he accidentally stumbles into Old Spice Guy-level fame by becoming a diaper pitchman, thereby achieving fame and self-sufficiently in kind of a humbling way in a brilliant touch, and the whole romance thing comes to a head where Akshay goes off to mend his broken heart in space (having to leave Earth because of a broken heart is fucking awesome) and Salman goes back to India to be in a movie, whereupon whaddaya know, there's Preity and the kid. Happily ever after. Kind of. What about Akshay . . .?
So now we're back in the space station, orbiting Earth, with Akshay's cosmonaut girl wiping away tears (not because she's a girl or anything, just because) and hesitantly asking him “So if she's your true love, does that mean you don't love me . . .?” Akshay says, you'll understand everything once you talk to my friend. So they get on a video chat, and Akshay wishes Salman happy birthday, and has him call Preity to the screen. Salman grouchily assents, and when Preity comes into frame down in Mumbai . . . Akshay brings his cosmonaut girlfriend into frame . . . and she's played by Preity as well! No, I don't have anything in my eye, dude, I'm cryin. Fuck off.
Now, a point needs to be made here. I do cry at the movies, and I openly admit it, but it's not any old movie that gets me going. The first time I saw La Bamba, and the plane went down and Esai Morales went “RICHIIEEEEEEEE!”? That made me cry. The end of The Remains of the Day when Anthony Hopkins' and Emma Thompson's fingers touched and you knew that was the end of anything between them? That did it too, strangely. Pixar I don't count because they have a neuropsychological algorithm that enables them to induce crying whenever they want to in order to distract from all the socially conservative nostalgic horseshit in the rest of the movies; I cry at Pixar movies but that's just because the algorithm works. (Ed. Note: *adjusts tin-foil hat*) I've cried at a handful of others as well, but there are plenty of allegedly emotionally involving movies where I'm lookin around at everyone else crying their eyes out and I'm like, “huh?” If a movie makes me cry, it makes you cry too. Yes, you. I'm talking to you through your computer. The fact that Jaan-E-Mann got me the way it did—at 9 o'clock in the morning, when sober and in a nominally decent mood, no less—means it's good.
Above and beyond the fact that it's a terrifically compelling, magnificently romantic piece of cinematic entertainment, there's a whole lot of cool movie nerd stuff in there too. There's a bit where you can tell there's a song coming on—it is, after all, Bollywood—but instead of the music kicking in, there's a knocking at the closet door. They open it and a bunch of musicians come falling out. “What the hell are you guys doing here?” and the one musician is like “Who's gonna play the music for the song?” Which is just awesome. And then the song starts. I don't remember if it's that song or another one, but Anupam Kher gets out a remote control during one song and fast-forwards through it because “no one will sit through a song if it's more than 5 minutes.” There's also a whole bunch of meta stuff where Salman's the director and Akshay's the actor when they're still trying to get Akshay to marry Preity. And then there's the thing (which I don't think is deliberate) where every non-Indian person they run into in New York City has an Australian accent. Even if that was because Shirish couldn't get a whole lot of Noo Yawk accents at a Mumbai casting call, it actually lends a nice non-naturalistic touch to the movie, and makes the audience feel as much like foreigners as Salman, Akshay, and Preity. (Still, though, Shirish, next time you make a picture in New York, hire me as dialect coach. I work cheap).
But yeah. If you want a good movie star picture, and you're not gonna be a whining penisface about having to read subtitles, it's all about Jaan-E-Mann. Big, romantic pictures are a staple of any serious and truly sophisticated cineaste's repertoire. This one's as big and as romantic as they get. Here's a sample (pardon the distracting text):
Hell, just watching that made me cry all over again. Godfuckindammit.
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