Going to see Umrao Jaan is like going to a showy textile museum

Umrao JaanDirector: Muzaffar Ali Starring: Rekha,Farooque Shaikh, Naseeruddin Shah, Raj Babbar,Shaukat Kaifi.It's the lace that launched a thousand gasps, groans, whistles and whispers. For over a year now Rekha's face as the fabulous Umrao Jaan, the many-splendoured courtesan of 19th century Lucknow, has held us in thrall, and the legend of Muzaffar Ali's movie-in-the-making has come to surpass the legendary character created in Mirza Hadi Ruswa's celebrated novel. Well, almost.Rekha as Umrao Jaan: If looks could killNow that the movie is up on the screen, the legend may leave you dumbstruck, but for all the wrong reasons. Muzaffar Ali's myth of a myth isn't what it was cracked up to be: a flesh-and-blood account of a cerebral beauty ahead of her time, a reappraisal of the social and sexual mores of courtly Lucknow, or a cinematic adaptation of a highly mannered if eclectic narrative novel.Instead, Ali has produced a confection as close to candyfloss as possible, an eyecatching but not always gripping movie full of gorgeously-dressed guys and dolls who have little else to recommend them other than their clothes. Going to see Umrao Jaan is like going to a showy textile museum, except the costumes are always on the move here but don't say much for the characters who wear them.Almost no major character and that includes Umrao Jaan herself, comes through, because there is not enough characterisation ; and almost no performance holds together because there is seemingly no direction. Perhaps it isn't altogether the director's fault.Filming Umrao Jaan must have been, to make a foreign example, a bit like filming The Great Gatsby: the sets and social milieu dazzle so much that the characters themselves are drowned; and also since both novels use the similar literary device of memoir, they make for a special aura of atmospherics that somehow can never be successfully transposed to the screen.The appeal of both books lies in what is left unsaid; both Umrao Jaan and Gatsby are glamorous lynchpins of a lifestyle but cannot be pinned down for being shimmering mirages themselves. They are symbols of something else the writers were trying to say, suggestions that may never come off on screen for lack of dramatic focus, which a successful film requires.That is still no excuse for some of the shoddiness of Umrao Jaan: the jerky sequences of narrative of Umrao's early life. the overall woodenness of Rekha and Farooque Shaikh's performance, the erratic camera work and the overwhelming decoration of the costumes and sets.Even in so stylised a milieu one would expect a certain tackiness in a courtesan's kotha, a certain hint of sexual pleasure bought and sold, an underlying interplay of heartlessness and vulnerability which Shaukat Kaifi as the imperious madam of the house so successfully brings off. Together with Naseeruddin Shah, who plays the equivalent of a tout in residence, Kaifi is one of the graces of an otherwise gauche effort that quickly degenerates into an elegantly-attired tearjerker.As for the face that was to make the movie, Rekha is so hypnotic an apparition that if looks could kill the first casualty would be Umrao Jaan herself. This is the best she can do it would seem-but is it the best Umrao Jaan deserved?Published By: AtMigration Published On: Oct 25, 2013--- ENDS ---

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Going to see Umrao Jaan is like going to a showy textile museum

Going to see Umrao Jaan is like going to a showy textile museum, except the costumes are always on the move here but don't say much for the characters who wear them.

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