ऐ दिल है मुश्किल

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil....a movie about love, and friendship..... in it's varying and at times overlapping textures. It seems to explore love, specifically in the in the man woman equation, through the romantic, passionate, platonic, sexual, and unrequited spaces, also weaving in how it changes and grows those involved. 

                          

The central characters Ayaan (Ranbir Kapoor) and Alizeh (Anushka Sharma) form the core relationship, two high energy, peppy characters with a common craze for old time Bollywood. Starting right from title, there's a lot of references to old songs, movies, sequences which I thoroughly enjoyed.... one sequence when she uses you tube, and his help to drape a Saree was super cute.

Ayaan falls in love with Alizeh. She however has different ideas...she feels all relationships fall under labels, have conditioned expectations, and thus become limiting...... and she loves Ayaan so much that she wants their relationship to rise above all other relationships, and so wants to keep it platonic.

She, however, finds Ali (Fawaad Khan) an ex boyfriend back in life, and discovers that she's still in love with him. They get married. She's out of the marriage in two years, saying that marriage brings with it the conditions of belonging and possessiveness, and she didn't want to become a significant part of life.

I'm taking the liberty of some spoilers here (as the movie's been around for a while now).

Saba (Aishwarya Rai) is an interesting character, a shayari, who keeps coming up with these beautiful shayaris, as beautiful as she herself is. She looks exotic, in a spaced out way which is how she is as a character as well, and while the relationship between Ayaan and her starts pretty much on sexual chemistry alone, she finds herself falling in love with him and leaves when she realizes he is yet in love with Alizeh.

There's a nice short sequence with Shah Rukh Khan, who is Saba's ex husband, with some witty and profound dialogues...in fact evoking from Ayaan...'sorry, मगर आप  लोग ये लाइन रट के आते हैं क्या ', but well, she's a shayari and he's an artist, so ...

Well, it is a lot of relationships...but interestingly woven together. 

I thought the end was a little too dramatic, almost to say, while all these offbeat relationships are possibilities, they cannot sustain themselves...guess that's why I felt the movie was exploring. That apart, I think it's one of KJo's more mature films, and I'm glad to see our cinema getting there.

And also a thanks to him for the beautiful urdu shayari's...I know atleast two people who are now inspired enough to learn urdu.

I'd say go watch....but there's no space for the known black and whites, so best to leave your own conditioning and personal framework at home...... and you might enjoy it that notch more :)