ππππ§π πππ«πππ¬: It is a shame how Tigmanshu Dhulia falters.
An adaptation of the 2011 French movie A Gang Story, Yaara, written and directed by Tigmanshu Dhulia, is a story of four friends who form a gang of criminals, chronicling their journey from childhood to middle-age against the backdrop of bureaucratic corruption, mafia culture, and student politics in a red-bricked Delhi University college. It is all the ingredients of being a commercial film, exploring themes the Hindi film industry has revisited frequently over the years.
This is a world that Dhulia is familiar with. In his better films, criminality and anarchy blends into a powerful grey that thickens the narrative beyond its plot. Sadly, Yaara is never brave enough to do anything more than trying to chronicle a story. It is an unsure, undesirable film about unlikeable characters trying to be the protagonists of their own story.
The film is shot, and told with a melancholic reverence, almost paying homage to the Amitabh Bachchan films of the β70s and β80s, but it lacks right where those narratives found their power. For a story that keeps revisiting montages of the charactersβ younger selves, Yaara is alarmingly low on emotions. Everything in the film seems to be going through the motions β one act after another β too designed to look real, too inadequate to feel emotional.
This is a shame because the first few minutes of Yaara are full of potential. A director of the caliber of Tigmanshu Dhulia always generates a healthy sense of anticipation, and here he has some of the most underused talents at his disposal. Vidyut Jammwal, Amit Sadh, Vijay Verma, and Kenny Basumatary form the βchaukdiβ, and Shruti Haasan plays the rebellious, left-wing college girl who is determined to make a difference to the world.
In the early part of the film, things seem to be building towards a good beginning and end. The arc of these characters is not a new one, but you hang on to the narrative, aware that you are in for good writing and trustworthy performances. While the latter remains true throughout the film, it is the writing that starts to make the narrative dry soon after the initial few scenes pass by.
There are mentions of Naxalite politics and an unfulfilled romance, but the larger aim of the narrative remains the celebration of the friendship the four protagonists share. Sadh, for one, has been part of a better buddy-film in Kai Po Che!, where the friendship rose beyond the scenes in the film.
This does not mean the film fails entirely. In moments, the performances elevate the film briefly, before the writing of these characters lets them down again. A token Jammwal action sequence, a predictable twist at the end, and manipulative repetition of montages to churn out emotions that are never given a chance to breathe to begin with, hamper the emotional quotient of Yaara.
Strangely, everything in Yaara seems to come with a layer of farce. There is a candid absence of authenticity in the world these characters inhabit. The story β the characters β never feel like a part of their geography. Ultimately, Yaara is simply a bad film involving some good actors and the potential of something enjoyable, if not path-breaking. It is a shame how Dhulia falters in the retelling here, for on paper, Yaara feels like the kind of movie that could have been a delicious watch, given the talent on screen here.
Streaming on Zee5.
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