{"id":59852,"date":"2012-11-20T16:22:42","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T16:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/test.tehelka.com\/?p=59852"},"modified":"2012-11-20T16:22:42","modified_gmt":"2012-11-20T16:22:42","slug":"the-sweet-nothingness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/the-sweet-nothingness\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sweet Nothingness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Jab Tak Hai Jaan<\/strong><\/span>
\nDIRECTOR
\n<\/strong>YASH CHOPRA
\n
\nSTARRING\u00a0<\/strong>
\nShah Rukh Khan, Katrina Kaif, Anushka Sharma, Anupam Kher
\nBy\u00a0Ajachi Chakrabarti<\/strong>
\nSHAH RUKH KHAN<\/strong>\u00a0isn\u2019t the only person to suffer from amnesia in\u00a0Jab Tak Hai Jaan<\/em>. As the layers of melodrama pile up, interspersed with shots of Khan\u2019s quivering lips and Katrina Kaif staring into nothingness, the humble viewer who had braved Delhi\u2019s Baghdad-like streets and smog to make it to the Diwali release could be excused for losing track of what\u2019s going on, what happened half an hour ago and wondering when, and whether, the whole thing would ever end.
\nJTHJ<\/em>\u00a0is really two movies piled into one. There\u2019s 2012 Shah Rukh Khan playing a bomb squad maverick right out of\u00a0The Hurt Locker<\/em>, defusing IEDs without donning any protective gear in Ladakh (chosen more for its scenic beauty than reputation as a war zone). And then there\u2019s 2002 Khan, a London immigrant playing Jack Dawson to charm rich NRI Katrina Kaif before tragedy strikes, \u00e0 la\u00a0Titanic<\/em>. The iceberg here is the curiously knighted \u2018Sir Jesus\u2019, as Kaif prays for Khan\u2019s survival after a motorcycle accident and promises to never see him again to sweeten the deal. Khan gets pissed with the deal, and decides to embrace death by joining the bomb squad. Unfortunately, he gets good at it, and is soon called \u2018The Man Who Cannot Die\u2019.
\nAnushka Sharma enters the scene at this point, reads Khan\u2019s diary and is sufficiently moved by his emotional story to want to shoot a documentary with him. Sharma, who earns all the acting chops that can possibly be handed out in such a film, convinces Khan to come back to London to confirm his story with the network executives, where he naturally gets hit by a car again, this time with attendant coma and amnesia. Katrina re- enters the story, leaving what little storyline was left in her wake, and there follows such an interminable sequence of will-he-will-she-which-she, that when the end did finally come, only the filthy state of the floor outside the hall kept me from kissing it in relief.
\nThere are, admittedly, things to like in the film. The locales, in typical Yash Chopra fashion, are stunning, and there is some raw emotion in at least the first iteration of the epic romance. But there\u2019s plenty of ham and even more sugar, and the film rapidly degenerates into the Shah Rukh Khan experience. If that floats your boat, you\u2019re welcome to it.
\nAjachi Chakrabarti is a Correspondent with Tehelka.<\/em>
\najachi@tehelka.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shah Rukh Khan isn\u2019t the only person to suffer from amnesia in Jab Tak Hai Jaan. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":59866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[8040,8106,1916,7275,5792,8051,8107,6232,5857,7487,8108,8109],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}