“Tamasha” is not an easy film to slot. Ali is obviously trying to push his boundaries and it doesn’t always work, but when it does, the result is breathtaking. For that alone, the film is worth a watch.

Imtiaz Ali makes good films. You could even call him the authority on love stories with a sufi flavour. But Tamasha doesn’t quite make the cut. Not for Imtiaz, not for Ranbir and not for Deepika. Even the Mohit Chauhan and AR Rahman combination of music seems like a leftover from Rockstar. There was so much potential here. So much the team could’ve achieved. But in the end, despite some flashes of brilliance here and there, Tamasha turns out to be no show. Ironically, it has a story that tries to ward off mediocrity in everyday life, and yet the film only manages to evoke mixed reactions.

Like most of his films, it ultimately boils down to whether you buy his brand of movie romance, where journeys and conversations often turn out to be irreversibly life-changing. Tamasha isn’t perfect, but it has heart and a sincerity of intent that sets it apart from many other films we’ve seen this year.

While his non-linear narrative template might appear rather indulgent, and possibly punctures the pulse of the movie, he manages to salvage it beautifully. A tighter edit would’ve gone a long way in uplifting the film, but that’s a flaw we are willing to overlook because he doesn’t adulterate his drama with quintessential Bollywood tricks, and plays it by his rules.

Tamasha is a film with ambitions of being mature and experienced. It creates an alternate reality for its principal characters and lets their emotions grow naturally to a point. But then the journey gets tiring for everyone concerned.
It doesn’t really get there. But the effort is not unbearably laboured. This is a film that doesn’t entirely succeed in its endeavour to decode the heart’s enigmatic excursions. But the journey is fascinating and admirable, thought not entirely fulfilling.

Tamasha is a disapp­ointing fare for a large chunk of the audience. It will find favour with a section of the city youth and class audiences but that will be grossly insufficient to recover the investment in the film. It will, therefore, entail heavy losses to all concerned.

While no one could accuse it of being subtle, Tamasha is affecting in parts, thanks in large measure to its lead players. Kapoor, with his gift for light comedy and mimicry, outpaces Padukone in the Corsica leg, but when they return to India and things become complicated, her pain is as palpable as his (this in spite of Tara being an underwritten character). Ali’s direction has also acquired a lightness of touch; when we first see Ved as a child, the legend reads “Shimla, flashback”, a little joke but also perhaps a reference to how memories are edited into home movies in our imaginations.

Tamasha goes a step ahead from these seminal questions to dwell on something even more significant: finding your true, inner self that has been lost in the robotic work life, to discover and embrace the clown lurking behind the automaton in you. In that sense Tamasha could well be the next part in the Ranbir Kapoor-In-Evolution series of Hindi cinema that boasts of films like Wake Up Sid, Rockstar and Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani.

At 151 minutes (the filmmakers seem to have used every single shot canned), only a handful of scenes stand out. Kapoor and Padukone are perfectly paired, and Ali brings out their chemistry in many tender moments.