Review: Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities
Baradwaj Rangan
Baradwaj Rangan
(C) The Economic Times, Madras Plus - April 10, 2004
Movies about the creative process are usually one of two types. They
either showcase the physical process itself -- as in 'Shakespeare in
Love', where a writer forges the happenings around him, incident by
incident, into fodder for his stories -- or delve into the artist's
mind, like 'Navrang', where a poet transfigures, through songs, his
simple wife into enchanting domestic (in 'shyamal shyamal baran'),
moonlit temptress ('aadha hai chandrama'), raucous playmate ('arre jaa
re hat'), and dance-muse ('kari kari andhiyari').
In 'Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities' - a tale of three women, actually
- MF Husain tries to have it both ways. He shows the physical process
of a Hyderabadi Nawab (Raghuvir Yadav, anchoring the film with its
only semblance of reality) and his muse, Meenaxi (Tabu), collaborating
on a novel. Husain also transfers us into the Nawab's mind, as the
story takes shape and form, with characters named Meenaxi (Tabu,
again), Maria (Tabu, yet again) and Kameshwar (Kunnal Kapoor, an
improbably, yet understandably, handsome stand-in for the
plain-looking Nawab).
The obvious question, therefore, would seem whether Husain succeeds in
having it both ways - but I think the question really is whether it
matters if he succeeds or not. The man clearly abhors being bound by
precedent, as 'Gaja Gamini' - that equivalent of a crash course on the
'bharatiya nari' delivered by a professor high on psychotropic
substances - showed. So, it's understandable that Meenaxi isn't simply
'Shakespeare in Love'-meets-'Navrang', but then what is it exactly?
I don't know. I don't even know if I'm supposed to know, if I'm
required to just bask in the free-flowing randomness of it all, or if
there are invisible dots I'm supposed to connect in my mind to
complete some sort of picture.
Is there a reason Meenaxi wears white and the Nawab black when they
first meet, while, at the end, he's in white, she's in black? When she
walks through the doorway of the Nawab's house, does that imply her
entering his consciousness? Is Meenaxi clad in white in the Hyderabad
portions and in varied hues in (the stories set in) Jaisalmer and
Prague because the Nawab has coloured her with his imagination? Is she
shown lying on a table amidst books because she's becoming a
novelistic creation herself?
Thus it goes, on and on for two hours, as you grapple with the meaning
of colour and imagery and sound and scene, and ultimately it's quite
wearying, especially with the hyper-surreal - Kameshwar walks past a
kite caught in a bush; some paces ahead, there's a lad carrying the
same kite on his back - mingling with the thuddingly literal. (The
Nawab cuts himself while shaving; seeing the blood, Meenaxi comments
on the irony that his story has no 'khoon', that it's lifeless.)
In the central role, Tabu faces the same problem Deepa Sahi did in
'Maya Memsaab' - she appears too rooted, too intelligent, too solid to
seem anyone's idea of a whimsical muse. (About the girlish singsong
she affects as Maria, the less said the better.)
At least she's presented fabulously, which is more than can be said
for the film. It looks good, all right, but nowhere do things come
alive in the revelatory manner you expect when purely-visual talents
like Husain and cinematographer Santosh Sivan come together, and
nowhere is the déją vu more emphasised than in the aerial-view montage
of Prague, which appears assembled from cutaway footage from Yash
Chopra's editing room. The choreography too is the same-old
'dupatta'-waving, the usual stage show with extras; only AR Rahman's
music saves the numerous song segments from being a total loss.
Only twice does 'Meenaxi' come tantalisingly alive - during the
blood-red opening credits which appear on yellowed parchment, and in
the 'chinnamma chilakamma' musical sequence, where the lyrics ("saare
jahaan ki rangat, mutthi mein aa gayee mere") perfectly meld with the
visual of dancers on a blue patterned floor, swirling around like
daubs of colour coming together in a painter's fever-dream. The rest
of 'Meenaxi' is like staring at a piece of modern art, wondering what
on earth the creator was thinking.