Jagga Jasoos: A differently-enabled stunner

Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Sayani Gupta

Rated: 8/10

It took three-and-a-half years in the making, tided over the real life lovers’ crisis of its lead pair, overhauled its music after the entire score had been charted, which by the way is all of 35 songs, changed the storyline, awaited its director to come into the mood and, phew, it finally released this weekend.

But Jagga Jasoos has been worth the wait, mainly because of Ranbir Kapoor’s impeccably riveting acting but in no small measure because of the novelty of the idea shaped and decorated to stunning results by director-writer Anurag Basu.

Basu, by the way, has come a long way from his House of Bhatt, Murder, Metro and Gangster days. He has since given us a differently-enabled blockbuster like Barfi and now comes with another novelty in Jagga Jasoos. Never has Bollywood attempted a genre that defies catagorisation with such impunity — a spy, adventure, fantasy, romantic, thriller musical.

Really, that’s what it is and it steals the show on all the fronts. The film, with Pritam helming its engaging musical score with all the short and long songs, rides high on a bespectacled Ranbir Kapoor growing up as an orphan, nurtured by a father figure who leaves him in a hostel to never come back. But before going away, he gives those crucial life lessons to his adopted son which finally stitch-up the film together.

Basu has been experimental and innovative in the presentation of this very special film which starts off as a narrative from Katrina Kaif at a literary festival for kids in Kolkata and goes back and forth, emerging seamlessly from the pages of the thriller comic book series called Jagga Jasoos much like the frames introduced to world cinema by James Cameron’s in Titanic. It is a concept sketched out both on screen and in the mind with keen care and aims to take your heart, which it does rather effortlessly.

Each scene has been crafted to perfection, be it the sprawling but beautiful starkness of Africa where Ranbir goes father-hunting, or Darjeeling (Basu’s favourite hill station it seems) where the growing up years of Jagga are filmed with a lot of beauty and passion.

If one can go away a little from the visual artistry of this film, it is Ranbir Kapoor who takes away all the laurels. Really, he is a thinking actor who puts life into his roles, this one being no different. He is inflicted with a stammer so severe that he can barely speak and that’s where the musical gets introduced into the proceedings. There is not a single dialogue that he utters in prose and makes conversation only through singing — and yet takes your heart with his act. The only thing out of place here is the fact that he looks overage for the school he goes to. Other than that, it is a Ranbir Kapoor movie through and through even though fans like me would want him to do a simple romantic number in a chic urban avatar too, once in a while — i.e. when he is over with the self-indulgence of rendering complex, differently enabled roles.

But Ranbir is not the only soul of this movie. His father played by Saswata Chatterjee is equally gifted and fleshed out. The moments the father-son duo shares throughout the film will make your eyes moist. Saswata, the scarykiller of Kahani, does an equally catchy role here — that of a good-intentioned detective on a crack mission for a rogue agent blackmailer Sinha, played by Saurabh Shukla. The backdrop of the Purulia arms drop gives the film a very Bengali overview which works in the film’s favour.

Katrina as a bumbling journalist on trail of an illegal arms racket originating in Burma does her side-kick role with elan. But the real worth of this assembly of perfection lies in the picturesque beauty that Basu lends to the movie. The localing, the cinematography and the visual vistas are so beautiful that they put you into the mood for a gentle romance powered in the backdrop of technologically-muscled artistic cinema.

On the whole, Jagga Jasoos is a courageous film that ticks all the squares and circles in the right places. The story may be a little bit of a lag but the dressing up of emotion, passion, thrills, kills and laughs, not to mention romance and adventure, has been done with so much of newness that it takes your breath away.

Basu and Ranbir, much like in Barfi, are taking astonishing strides together that are a leap for the cinematic mankind, away from the straitjacket of a blockbuster mould. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 16 July, 2017