The Dazzling Charm of Tashan

The first thing I remember of Tashan (2008) was its poster — everyone and everything at a diagonal of 20 degrees to the right, like someone had knocked it sideways. A visual promise, or a warning. Nothing about this movie would be straight. Then came the promos — the empty landscape of ‘Dil Haara’ ruptured by Sukhwinder Singh’s voice and the pungent colours in strings of fluttering cloth tied around the body and waist. 

The waist! Kareena Kapoor (then-not-yet-but-about-to-be) Khan’s size zero waist spilled across newspapers. I remember wondering, when I first heard of it in the gossip vines of film columns, if her size was truly ‘zero’. That is, if her body tapered to a point and then tapered away from it, like two triangles touching each other at one corner. An odd image that was extinguished when visuals of the song ‘Chhaliya’ crept up and ate the discourse like a ravenous creature. Here was a film so hopped up on its own myth of blaring style, it could only be sensational. It operated beyond the dull binaries of good and bad, because it seemed so indifferent to it. It just wanted to be noticed. 

The film flopped. The action adventure road film starring Anil Kapoor, Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, and Kareena Kapoor Khan, with music by Vishal-Shekhar, shot from Ladakh to Rajasthan to Kerala to Greece to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) in Mumbai, collected the most tired criticisms — “terribly trashy”, “a pathetic attempt to exploit [n]ostalgia”. Critics wanted a story, they wanted logic, they wanted coherence. So, it seemed, did audiences. Rachel Saltz at the New York Times, however, wrote a positive review under the headline “Big Visuals and Tiny Bikini”, but who has ever heeded the New York Times. Largely, the film was slotted into a filmographic villainy. How dare it not make sense?  

I was undeterred by this noise. The previous year, the critics and the audience performed a similar trounce over Saawariya (2007), and it was that moment — perhaps, my first moment of film criticism — where I dismissed reviews, the audience, the box office, and insisted on my love for the film being enough. With Tashan, it was something like that. The shockwaves of the music and its sparkling picturizations would shudder for scenes after, years later. The ridiculous set-up for the ridiculous song ‘White White Face’ paled when the visuals burst, like white heat, Vishal Dadlani’s lyrics as maddening, choking, and unshakeable as the idea of Udit Narayan’s voice over Saif Ali Khan’s blonde-wig-faced lip-syncing. A sequinned stole over a leopard print jacket unbuttoned over a bare body, fist-thick belts over three-fourth pants, silken coats over polka dot shirts and velvet bell bottoms, a little latex red dress. There is not one single detail, by costume designer Aki Narula, which makes sense, one single combination that hints at cogence. There is even a reference to Harvey Weinstein flung in there for good measure.

The pleasure of texture and colour — Kareena Kapoor Khan’s sleeveless anarkalis in the brightest of parrot greens, coral blues, magentas — of choreography, of expanded drama, clear open skies, deep blue waters, honey-dyed sands. When she gets out of the water in ‘Chhaliya’, the sunlight reflected looks like diamonds shimmering on the surface of some sky blue fabric. She makes eye contact with us — a lot of the characters break the fourth wall talking directly to us, the first half narrated by Saif Ali Khan, the second by Akshay Kumar — as she feels herself up, walking up and down the shore. Ayananka Bose’s askew cinematography twists and turns, refusing to be stable, symmetric. Unlike any of the work Bose has done before or since, it is so experimental and vigorous. In ‘Dil Haara’, he sharply zooms into Saif as the waves crash onto the rocks. He swerves right and left quickly with every beat. When, in a scene, they enter an empty fort in Rajasthan, the camera swerves to the right, then a 360 degree wide-angle quick, smooth pan that disorients the senses. Together, the impression was that of looking through a kaleidoscope, while on a rollercoaster. A rainbowed swirl. How was this not irresistible? 

The idea of a film being ahead of its time is fraught. Flip the idea and it can seem that its people were before their time. A film is always of its time. An audience is always of its time. The discrepancy is a matter of taste and taste is a matter of training. I don’t think Tashan was ahead of its time. For me to believe that, I would have to believe that had it been released today, it would have done well, or at least better. Counterfactuals are hazy smoke machines of arguments. They express love as an argument. 

Perhaps it is true that I enjoy the memory of the film more than the film — that is not rare, nor is that nothing. Tashan is by no means a tight film. Neither is it tense — a genre promise. The action scenes flicker without effect. Love comes as sharp expositions. Nothing here builds. Everything just happens. That is all true. But for a film to stain so strongly, it must, I suppose, be made of equally strong dyes. 

The film is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.