In a recent interview, Mani Ratnam said he doesn't watch too many Tamil films. But he sure borrows DVDs to 'inspire' the filmmaker in him. And so the narrative of his much-hyped Yuva (Aayitha Ezhuthu in Tamil) is evidently copied from the Mexican film Amores Perros. That's good news because: a) Yuva has a certain form and b) most Indians would not have seen Amores Perros. The bad news is that form alone, that too plagiarised, cannot carry a film. Amores Perros' content and form probably evolved from a certain untranslatable historical and social context. Mani seeks to import the form and impose Indian content on to it. The result is contrived.
Opening with an accident on the Howrah bridge, the film travels back in time to outline the lives of the three characters involved in the accident. First, we learn about Lallan Singh (Abhishek Bachchan), a mercenary rowdy. In Mani's reckoning, lower class men are pointlessly violent and beat up their women. Hence Lallan's wife Sasi (Rani Mukherjee) is often abused and seems to love him for that. Lallan is hired by a politician to kill student leader Michael Mukherjee (a miscast Ajay Devgan) whose love interest is a chirpy Radhika (Esha Deol). Michael and his friends are out to cleanse the political system and they decide to contest four seats in a bypoll (assembly or Lok Sabha?). Representative of upper middle class disenchantment with politics, Mani wants youth in politics but his idea of politics does not have an ideological or social context. Towards the end, we see four denim-clad men enter Parliament/assembly—Mani's facile take on political change. Sandwiched in the story is the narrative of Arjun (Vivek Oberoi) and Mira (Kareena). Dil Chahta Hai gave us a sincere peep into the lives of the rich and young, but in Yuva these characters remain cardboard-like.
Mani wants to tell a story he is experientially not connected to. Calcutta is not his terrain, yet the story is set there. So the Howrah bridge is nothing but a prop. The problem is Mani wants to do pan-Indian cinema and not remain a Tamil filmmaker. He does not realise that good cinema (Bunuel, Ray or Alejandro Inarritu's Amores Perros) is local, but Aayitha Ezhuthu proves he is disconnected even from the Tamil milieu. In the film, Arjun tells Mira: "It's people like you who patronise bad Hindi films." Yuva pretends to be a good film.
US Top 5
1. Shrek 2
2. Troy
3. Van Helsing
4. Mean Girls
5. Man on Fire
INDIAN Top 51. Yuva
2. Main Hoon Na
3. Masti
4. Murder
5. Uuf Kya Jaadoo
Courtesy: Film Information
