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The much-awaited love story of the year has hit the theatres. And it\u2019s a movie that one shouldn\u2019t miss<\/p>\nMagically, 2 States ends with a beautifully staged wedding where the film\u2019s culture-crossed couple finally get their wish. Sigh of relief? Not quite. This is a film you don\u2019t want to end. It\u2019s a story\u2026.but wait, it doesn\u2019t seem like a story!! Not in the sense of \u2018Once upon a time when Boy Met Girl\u2019. You know exactly where our twosome, the gorgeous Ananya and the diffident Krish are going\u2026But you get so sucked into their journey, their courtship, conflicts, tiffs and buts, that you feel after a point that you aren\u2019t watching them in a film. They are people we know. And love.<\/p>\n
Some come, fall in love.<\/p>\n
These are people whom you\u2019ll carry home and keep in some corner of your heart. Not just (gorgeous) Ananya (who incidentally is played by the very gorgeous Alia Bhatt) and her other-half Krish, but also their parents, specially Krish\u2019s father a man so misunderstood all his life he fears being recognized for some deeply-concealed goodness in his heart that comes out towards the end of this film (that you wish would never end).<\/p>\n
Indian marriages, they say, are the marriage of two families. Sure enough, when the shy repressed Punjabi Krish meets the spunky spirited beer-guzzling, chicken-chewing Ananya, there is hell to pay from both sides.<\/p>\n
The thing about cultural stereotyping is that it very often does exist in exactly the forms that we see them exist in films and books. Chetan Bhagat\u2019s lively novel from which this film is adapted, harps on the stereotypes in a way where we don\u2019t see the characters as \u201ctypes\u201d but as individuals who conform to a type. This delectable game of slotting the individual is best illustrated by Krish\u2019s loud-brassy Punjabi mom who behaves likes a cross between Kirron Kher and what Vidya Balan in Rajkumar Gupta\u2019s Ghanchakkar would have been had she grown older and had a son.<\/p>\n
Oh yes, Revathi as Ananya\u2019s graceful Tamil mother is also outstanding, though Amrita\u2019s performance would easily shout her down in the Who Is The Better Mother contest.<\/p>\n
Amrita Singh\u2019s true-to-type Punjabi housewife\u2019s character (you know the kind who has given herself the liberty to say the most insulting things to people who are not like her) gradually melts down in the narrative as her dark secret shame \u2013 \u201ca drunken abusive husband\u201d \u2013 comes out in the open.<\/p>\n
Ronit Roy, that fine actor is no stranger to playing the abusive father. It\u2019s amazing how empathetic he makes the discernibly brutish character in \u201cUdaan\u201d and now this film without taking the character\u2019s arc through the filmy range from villainy to repentance. Thanks to Roy\u2019s dignified damned Dad\u2019s act, 2 States is as much a father-son story as a girl-boy thing.<\/p>\n
Not every sequence works here. I found Revathi\u2019s singing performance (arranged by Krish) a little too syrupy and Alia\u2019s anti-dowry speech at a brassy Punjabi wedding a little too contrived.<\/p>\n
Minor slip-ups.<\/p>\n
Most of the time cultural differences are articulately pinned down in the film. Debutant director Abhishek Varman knows how to tell a story embedding individual scenes with a distinctive personality without straining for effect. The narrative traverses a number of cities \u2013 Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai \u2013 searching out enchanting pockets of storytelling for the couple to grow into.<\/p>\n
This is a film that never forgets to surprise even when going about the task of telling a story that can only end one way. Arjun Kapoor and Alia Bhatt ensure that their mutual participation in the rites of courtship, copulation, conflict and reconciliation yields a harvest of hefty scenes. Their performances display a natural flair for understatement underlined by a deep understanding of the language of commercial cinema. And yes, they look so made for each other, their compatibility is almost karmic.<\/p>\n
Two world, two cultures, two families, one love story\u2026.2 States re-defines and rejuvenates the love-marriage space.Simple and yet striking, gorgeous and graceful, this is a film where we come away hankering to know what happens to the couple after the film is over.<\/p>\n
The film is put together with the stress on lightness of tone. From the clothes that Ananya and Krish wear to the spaces they inhabit\u2026 you won\u2019t find them fuelling a filmy flamboyance into the narrative. Binod Pradhan\u2019s cinematography is the opposite of epic. And that\u2019s the truth which these urban characters represent.<\/p>\n
And yes, Alia dressed as a bride looks like a doll. In a way the honesty that her face never ceases to express symbolizes what this film strives to do. 2 States creates a world where characters don\u2019t shout to be heard. They just belong to a world where being proper, politically or otherwise, is not always a pre-condition.<\/p><\/div>\n
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The much-awaited love story of the year has hit the theatres. And it\u2019s a movie that one shouldn\u2019t miss Magically,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shows4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shows4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shows4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shows4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shows4.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shows4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shows4.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shows4.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shows4.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}