Laila Majnu

The first question screenwriter Imtiaz Ali answers is the most obvious on one’s mind: do you even want to watch a reiteration of Laila Majnu’s story today? Well, yes you do.

Laila Majnu is a pleasant surprise that doesn’t waste time getting to the point. Minutes into the film, we know exactly what we’re getting, who we’re seeing and what we have to feel for them.

Laila (Tripti Dimri) is a school-going teenager who daydreams of being romanced by Prince Charming. At school she is beguiled by stories of her friends’ flings; to her, tales of love’s first lip-lock have the allure of a fairytale.

Laila, though enamoured by the idea of a Mills & Boon romance, is this generation’s teenager. She knows she is beautiful, and hence is a bit of flirt. Living in the small Kashmiri hillside town, Laila has a bit of a reputation with the boys — but only as an innocent tease.

Qais (Avinash Tiwari), on the other hand, is infamous for his philandering. As the town’s token rich bad-boy, he is dramatically linked to ladies in over-embellished stories that are passed around from aunties to girls.

As the Laila-Majnu tale necessitates, Laila and Qais will fall in love despite their family’s mutual animosity. The lovers will be separated, Laila will die and Majnu will wander the wilderness as a madman.

Co-screenwriter/director Sajid Ali (Imtiaz’s younger brother) paints under these broad strokes. His film is a delicately adapted, emotionally riveting present-day version that bears an immediately identifiable directorial signature.

In Sajid and Imtiaz’s point of view, both Laila and Majnu are today’s teenagers, and so their ideas of courtship and romance reflect this generations’ attitude (minus the sex and sexuality one assumes from Bollywood).

The screenplay intelligently divides its time between Laila and Majnu, building up their all-too-familiar story in a unique, enchanting setting that doesn’t give in to the norm (i.e. showing India-held Kashmir without the unrest).

The screenplay deliberately writes Laila and Majnu as immature youngsters at times. As one may expect given their ages, neither character is mature about their decisions. While there are logical ways for the story to unfold, one should appreciate the fact that the decisions Laila and Majnu make are limited by what one can think of in their 20s.

Expanding the story from that point of view is an experienced filmmakers’ choice, despite this being Sajid’s debut film.

One also realises that Imtiaz and Sajid’s take is female empowering. In a few select moments, the writers give Dimri powerful pre- and post-intermission scenes to perform in.

On the other hand, Qais and his slow regression to madness may feel a bit off, considering how it comes to pass. However, since the third act solely fixates on this side of the story, one can’t help but be swept away in the current.

On the acting front, Dimri is a revelation, and Tiwari — who in one early scene, makes fun of his own ugliness — is mesmerising as a slightly nuts, good-hearted scoundrel.

The duo is supported by a fantastic, earthy-sounding soundtrack by Niladri Kumar, Joi Barua and Alif. Six out of seven songs are catchy, upbeat numbers that stay in line with the film’s expertly measured mood and timbre.

In fact, there is good chance you’ll agree on the placement of a preppy romantic song at the end credits because, despite the story’s inherent graveness (and its datedness), after two long hours the lightheartedness grows on you.

In the end, this is not a sad story. For the Ali brothers, even death and madness come with a feather-light feel.

Laila Majnu is a delicately adapted, emotionally riveting present-day version of an age-old love story. The Russian horror movie The Mermaid tries to make up for a boring story with tame jump-scares

The Mermaid: Lake of the Dead

The opening frames of The Mermaid: Lake of the Dead (a Russian horror movie dubbed in English) starts like any scary story. A funereal-sounding little girl narrates the fable of a mermaid that spellbinds one to fall in love with her, and then takes away their loved ones one by one, until that person dies of a broken heart.

The build-up sounds fine, even somewhat engaging, when the narrator makes a stupid mistake: she tries to bring the viewer into the story’s world by breaking the fourth wall, suggesting that the mermaid will come after the viewer. This is not the first time an imprudent jump-scare tries to “boo” the audience into a false state of panic.

In a story about a young couple who will try to escape a wet-haired long-shirt wearing ghoul (yes, the Mermaid is actually a cursed spirit; and yes, that is the entire story), one knows jump-scares will be plenty and ineffective.

When the makers of The Mermaid aren’t indulging in cheap theatrics, a keen-eyed observer should be able to spot a lot of small interesting things on-screen.

Director Svyatoslav Podgaevskiy — whose credits include a horror entry every year since 2014, and who will eventually have a career in Hollywood — is skilled in staging his actors in relation to the cameras’ movement. One can see a very ’90s way of lighting sets (i.e. lighting actors and some portion of the sets with hard lights and shadows), as opposed to the evenly-lit, shadow-less lighting practices of today.

His camera sometimes follows actors around, moving from one set of characters to another, before retracing back (the technique is sometimes called a ‘hand-off’). This very ‘Spielbergian’ way of moving through the set subconsciously fools the viewer into believing that the movie experience is immersive.

While it may be a coy trick (one which worked, because no one in the cinema was bored), it doesn’t hide the fact that the screenplay and the characters aren’t engaging or relatable. The young couple (Viktoriya Agalakova and Efim Petrunin) look like teenage school-children; their sole necessity to the plot is the story’s clichéd requirement to have adolescent actors reacting to jump-scares.

Just when one realises that the plot offers nothing of interest, The Mermaid haphazardly reveals the creature’s backstory. The revelation rounds off some nagging plot points and hardly does anything to stifle the yawn that had been building for the last hour.

Published in Dawn, ICON, September 16th, 2018