Lootera: Trapped to be Stolen

Lootera (Thief)

Romance/Drama

Director: Vikramaditya Motwane

Run Time: 2 hr 13 min

July 4, 2013

Plot

The film Lootera, set in the 1950s of West Bengal, begins with Pakhi Ray, the daughter of a rich landlord, suffering from asthma. Pakhi’s father narrates the tale of a great king whose life had been trapped in a parrot. He reiterates this idea claiming that his life is trapped in Pakhi and if anything ever happened to her, then he would die too. Soon, the second lead of the film enters, Varun Shrivastav. Varun claims to be an archaeologist, wanting to study the landlord’s land and treasures. Pakhi and Varun soon fall in love through their passion for painting. However, a thief as he was, he steals all of the landlord’s wealth and treasures and flee’s, leaving poor Pakhi heartbroken. The film forwards to a year later. Pakhi is in Dalhousie and suffering from tuberculosis. Her father has passed away and she has no one except her helper. Varun arrives at Dalhousie to pursue his next robbery. One day, injured, he runs into Pakhi’s home and demands shelter and relief. Helpless Pakhi, lets him in but maintains distance and remains cold towards him. Varun discovers Pakhi’s medical condition while he reads a letter she wrote stating that she would die when the last leaf from the tree outside would fall. Varun, wanting to make amends with Pakhi for his mistakes, nurses her and explains his circumstances in an attempt to win back her trust. He paints a leaf and ties it to the branch of the tree before he leaves, attempting to leave Pakhi with some hope of survival. Varun dies in an encounter by the police while Pakhi realizes that the leaf is fake and her eyes fill with tears of joy and sadness.

Review/Critique

Lootera is a film loosely inspired by O. Henry’s short story, The Last Leaf. Some aspects that stood out to me most pertained to the sets, colours and compositions, the pacing, direction and the balanced feeling of magic and authenticity.

The film maintained raw and natural colour schemes that included pastel shades of beige, brown, pink, blues etc. The rooms were complemented with soft yellow lights suggesting a homely and calm atmosphere and the scenes mostly pertained to the sunny and warm outside. Having been placed in West Bengal in 1953, the sets were built to match the aesthetics and the living style of that period. The scenes shot at this location emphasized a great deal of space. With most wide angles, the director captured plenty of empty roads and spaces. Scenes emphasizing these ideas included the part where Pakhi and Varun stroll in a double-arm distance from each other, or when Pakhi teaches Varun painting (the idea further brought out by the blank canvas). Showing scenes this way could perhaps have been the director's intention to freedom—freedom to love, freedom to pursue the passion of art and the freedom to be someone respectable and feel respected; it was the freedom that neither of the characters had in the rest of the film (Varun is trapped as his uncle demands robbing and robbery from him as a method to pay back, while Pakhi is trapped with her medical condition--Tuberculosis).

The set, built in Dalhousie, consisted of a much darker interior home contrasting the wondrous snowy city outside. This kind of setting reflected Pakhi’s condition. The outside of her home was as white and pure as she was; helping Varun regardless of the hatred she had for him. However, the dark home suggested her unhappy and sick medical condition that she could no longer fight and was stuck with. Pakhi could have chosen a warmer location to reside after her father's death yet chose Dalhousie because she felt that her passion for writing a masterpiece could only be fulfilled there. The brink of the cold simply symbolized the onset of death of a pure soul amid all the chaos that she never signed up to be a part of. The ‘Making of Lootera’ found on Youtube gives a glimpse of the director’s choice to use the location of Dalhousie for the cold atmosphere. The director wanted the actors to naturally feel cold instead of acting to be cold on screen. Another scene displayed how their entire set had fallen apart due to the heavy 10 feet of snow causing production to slow down.

The film had a slow and steady pace overall with specific faster chase scenes. The slow pacing that some might call boring instead complemented the idea of Varun’s under the table kind of acts that involved patience, meticulous calculation and gaining the trust of other people. Had the pace of the film been rushed, it would have left the viewer with many more questions than answers. The viewers would have gotten the feeling that such big robberies with lack of planning don't seem authentic, or falling in love this quickly seems very unlikely. The chase scenes, however, maintained a quick pace to create confusion. From The Last Leaf, O. Henry says, “One street goes across itself one or two times. A painter once discovered something possible and valuable about this street. Suppose a painter had some painting materials for which he had not paid. Suppose he had no money. Suppose a man came to get the money. The man might walk down that street and suddenly meet himself coming back, without having received a cent!”(P. 12). The chase scene in Dalhousie reflected this entire concept. Varun was to steal an expensive work of art and the cops chased him on the streets that crossed; due to the crossing and overlapping streets, Varun lost his friend and killed a cop in the process.

Lootera, just like The Last Leaf, had the idea of one's soul being trapped in another. While the father's soul was trapped in Pakhi, Pakhi’s soul was trapped in the leaf. Varun’s soul was also trapped in Pakhi. And, in the process of trying to save her, he loses his life. The contrast, however, comes in play that Varun loses his life from the mistakes he made. It is ironic that at the end he has painted a leaf for Pakhi’s survival; although earlier in the film, Varun’s character established that he couldn’t paint leaves. In The Last Leaf, the old artist paints his masterpiece—a leaf—to save the life of a young artist. However, the old artist’s soul isn't trapped in Johnsy (the young artist suffering from pneumonia).

Overall, a great film that draws solid connections between its first and second half as well as from the story of The Last Leaf.

3.5/5

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