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2.0 out of 5 stars
'The Notebook' revisited?, January 18, 2009
I was hoping for a lot from this movie as I saw some reviews on Bollywood sites calling it intense, emotional and different. The first time director is also the star of the movie, Ajay Devgan, and his wife in the movie is his real wife, Kajol. Both of them did well with their parts.
Unfortunately my experience of it was unengaging and boring and I found myself fast forwarding through it hoping it would pick up.
The story is a little like 'The Notebook' (which I enjoyed). A wife has Alzheimer's and no longer recognizes her husband. He meets her as an apparent stranger and relates the tale of a romantic tale (which of course is their story). It goes back to their first meeting on a cruise ship when he was a psychiatrist on a holiday and she a waitress.
I think the cruise ship was part of the problem for me. It offers limited locations and interest. This section just went on a bit. They tried every camera angle - some split screen, shots through holes in chair backs, shooting on the diagonal and shifting back and forth between protagonists. This gave the film a slick modern look but I found it broke it up to much and distracted from the connection they were trying to build. This approach continued on land after.
The music, which had some moody Latin sounds woven through it, wasn't to my taste. The opening credits came over a song and a series of quotes about love that were difficult to read and got lost among the credits.
So overall there was a lot of effort put into making it slick and arty but for me it left it feeling cold rather than intense.
I then didn't care as much about the couple when they got to the second half of the movie and the developing Alzheimer's. Full marks though for tackling this material.
There was also a brief section where a question is put about whether one should stay with a partner who is mentally no longer themselves and no longer really present for you in the relationship. This question is raised by the wife of one of the psychiatrist's patients who wants to be parted from her schizophrenic partner who has become too much to deal with. Now full blown long term schizophrenia is hardly the same thing and the patents wife has been one of those dedicated long suffering wives who is now counseled to endure this as well for love. I felt a bit uncomfortable with them linking these two situations but again I see they were trying to go deeper.
The Notebook was far from slick and was a bit awkward in the earlier stages but I found it towering in comparison with its portrayal of the elderly couple. While Ajay and Kajol do seem to deeply care for each other I found much less involved with the story portrayed here.
Sadly I abandoned it and I gather it didn't do well at the box office but as some reviewers in India did like it so perhaps it may appeal to you.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Lovely, July 11, 2011
This review is from: U Me Aur Hum (English subtitled) (Amazon Instant Video)
It's a real love , why ? Because , first in this moos you realize that when you really love some one you dont care about his/her condition in this movie is the perfect in this Kind of case
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Skip, February 21, 2010
Actor Ajay Devgan makes his directorial debut and stars opposite his real-life wife, Kajol, in this, their 7th film together. While the melodramatic story line borrowed from the Hollywood film 'The Notebook' (2004) is certainly conducive to Bollywood treatment, the film fails to entertain.
Ajay (Devgan) and Piya (Kajol) are an older married couple. She has Alzheimer's disease and can't remember her husband, so he approaches her as a stranger and tells her their love story, which unfolds in flashback, without her realizing that it's about the two of them. In 'The Notebook,' different actors play the characters at different ages, but here, the leads play the characters throughout, so there's no mystery about what's going on--you know right from the start that Piya can't remember her past. Their story, which isn't romantic in the least, begins on a cruise ship, when they're both young and carefree--she's a cocktail waitress and he's a passenger traveling with two couples--Vicky and Natasha, who are happily married, and Reena and Nikhil, who are unhappily married (none of them serve any purpose in the story). The audience is told that Ajay is a cool and charming guy, but he doesn't seem very impressive at all. The first time Piya meets him he gets wasted and makes a fool out of himself. Then, he sneaks into her room and reads her diary in order to use the personal information to woo her. He lies about liking all the same things she does--chocolates, Paris, salsa dancing, Labradors--and wins her heart. She finds out he's lying, forgives him, and marries him. Gee, what a catch. Not long after, she's diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's.
I have family members with this disease and I was affected by the film's depiction of it. While it's far from completely accurate, it's much more realistic than 'The Notebook.' Alzheimer's patients are often terror-stricken, or at the very least, extremely anxious about their confusion, and the film does a fine job of capturing that relentless panic as well as the frustration and helplessness of loved ones. It also shows the teasing, bittersweet moments of lucidity that a person with dementia can have, when they fleetingly become their old selves and just as quickly disappear again.
But the film's representation of these aspects of the disease is part of the problem with it. The second half, in which Piya rapidly deteriorates, goes on and on and on with no reprieve--much like Alzheimer's--leaving the audience as frazzled as the characters.
- The Bollywood Ticket: The American guide to Indian movies (Subscribe: The Bollywood Ticket)
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