Jab Tak Hai Jaan - 2012 Movie Review

 

A beautiful last love story created by the great Yash Chopra. The story portrays the wonderfulness of being in love along with the difficulties that are caused by it. In the first half of the story, Samar (Shahrukh Khan), is shown as a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, who has a lot of energy, and says what he thinks. Then he meets Meera (the Yash Chopra heroine), a daddy's girl who is about to marry a man she doesn't truely love. Meera is a woman who is refined and has a lot of self-control and makes baragins with God in order to get what she wants, along with this she also has walls built around her (why?... you'll have to watch). We only see these walls come down and the true Meera emerge when she is with Samar. But she has made a promise to God to marry the man her father wants her too, and when an accident happens to Samar, she believes it is her fault for going against her promise to God. Therefore, she promises that if he lives she will never meet him again. Samar lives and she tells him that she will no longer see him and will marry her fiance. In that instant we see Samar change to a cold man as his love walks out the door, he then tells God that he will put himself in danger every day in order to prove to Meera her baragin won't suffice to keep him alive. It is truely painful to see Samar walk out of the church with a stone cold look on his face, knowing that his love broke his heart and he will spend his life without her.

In the second half, ten years later, we see Samar has become a bomb defuser for the Indian Army. This is where Akira enters. A spirited girl, and very modern in her thinking of how relationships should work. She is a tom-boy who loves to have fun and is very intrigued by Samar, who she is following for a documentary that could make her career. She is interested in this hardened man who puts his life in danger. While with him she falls in love with him, I think it's because he is a broken man and she wants to put him together again, which is nothing she has felt with a man before, and she seems determined to make him forget about Meera.

And then comes the dilemma, Samar meets with another accident and loses his memory. The only thing he remembers is being with Meera, and does not recognize Akira, and continues to ask for Meera. I admire Akira for taking it upon herself to unite the two even though she loves him. She finds Meera and brings her to the hospital to see Samar, which the doctors believe will help him remember the past ten years. My favorite scene is when Samar and Meera meet after such a long time, it is so beautiful and sweet how they hug each other and you can see Meera allow herself a bit of happieness of being with him again. Samar is told that he is suffering from amnesia and what he remembers is from ten years ago. Because of this he believes that he and Meera have been together the entire time, and Meera plays along. The doctor tells her it will help him adjust and maybe remember but I think she truely does it because her love for him never ended, and this is a chance to be with him. Even though we can she her restrain herself when it comes to truely letting herself be with him there are moments in their time together that we see her allow herself the luxury of being with him. Eventually, Samar gets his memory back, in an unlikely event that I could have done without but it's a movie and reality should be left at the door anyways. He confronts Meera for making a mockery of his love for her by leading him on, and he leaves her crying in the same church where her baragins were made, and where the war began between Samar and God. I won't tell the ending but if you know Yash Chopra you can assume how the movie ends.

I think it is interesting that God is believed to be the obstacle in the way of Samar and Meera being together, but in reality Meera is the obstacle to their happily ever after. Her utter belif that she keeps her promises to God is both admirable and stupid as we become frustrated with her inability to realize God never intended for them to be apart. The story of Samar and Meera becomes a testament to Akira that true love exists, and modern views on relationships may be incorrect.

Now onto performances. Of course Shahrukh did wonderful as the happy guy bouncing from job to job, but he also did a wonderful job as the hardened man wary of letting people in. He is an actor who can really portray love, and does so in little nuances, such as a hand on a cheek, or a kiss on the forhead, he has it down. His chemistry with Katrina Kaif is very nice, and helps make the story believable. For this being Katrina Kaif's first serious romantic film I think she did great. She did a believable job portraying a self-restrained, and strong woman, who allows a man to come a sweep her off her feet. Some critics panned her performance for being to cold and ridged in spots, but I think this is how Yashji wanted it to be. She is loose and goofy only with Samar and restrained the other times, when she is reunited with Samar, I think she is supposed to show some coldness so that she can protect herself. The character Meera belongs to Kaif and she did a wonderful job portraying her. Anuskha Sharma does a great job playing Akira. Sharma very easily embodies this tom-boy hyper girl. But the moments in the movie where she is serious she also does very well, and she is able to cry on screen which is always a plus in portraying emotions! Other critics said that her character was too much and over the top, but if Sharma is representing modernism, which is overwhelming and all encompassing, then that is what the character needs to be as well, which is what she did. Some said her character has no dimension to her, but in the serious scenes we can see that is not true. Overall, all three did a wonderful job portraying their characters.

In the end, this is a beautiful love story that sweeps you off your feet. And it's extra special because it is the last great work we will see of Yash Chopra. Enjoy the movie because it is spectacular.