Veer-Zaara

Veer-Zaara is an amazingly long movie full of color, dance and incredibly cheesy singing. I was very surprised at how fake the singing voices were, how bad the lip synching was, and somehow how fake the backgrouds looked. Yet despite all of these negative perceptions, I was pleasantly satisfied with the overall story about passion, integrity, and reconciliation. The love story between the two main characters presents an inspiring example of two people keeping their word and carrying on eachothers legacies.

This love story all begins with the conflict of two seperate populations split by British influence. This split was also the result of many cultural and religious differences between these two countries. Veer is a Hindu Indian while Zaara is a Muslim Pakistani. Zaara has already been promised to another man set up by her father. However, Zaara had no idea how real love felt until she met Veer. Zaara is a passionate young girl who is very determined to take her nanny, Bebe's ashes to a sacred river in India. Zaara is a woman of her word, she will not let anything stand in her way. She threatened her own life just so she could keep her promise of returning Bebe's ashes to this body of water. While Zaara is on her journey she comes accross a handsome young man named Veer, these two hit it off within the first day and set themselves up for a lifetime of passion for eachother.

The English language is woven into this film very peculiarly. It seems that English was suddenly spoken only if a character was very passionate about something, if they were yelling, crying or happy they would suddenly speak English. Maybe speaking in English emphasizes emotions to them and helps them get their point accross more directly. I don't think it's uncommon to take certain words or phrases from different languages and adopt them to your vocabulary, yet these were not just words or phrases, it was conversation. I believe that this was also happening in attempt to modernize India and Pakistan by applying English in their culture.

Most of this movie was set in the beautiful countryside that at times appeared unreal because of the vibrant colors of the land. Rolling hills flowed throughout the scenes, I believe this is the first time we've seen a film with such an amazingly lush landscape. The countryside was full of life, sugar cane was grown as well as rice in these fertile fields shown throughout the movie. There didn't seem to be any pollution in this rural landscape mosly because there was very little transportation by cars. This film rarely shows any urban spaces, which is surprising since India has one of the top poulations in the world. I expected to see a lot more people bustling through the streets like they did in Japan or China, but from what we saw the population seemed very scarce.

Unlike the west, singing and dancing is clearly very important to the Bollywood style. Most movies are not three hours in length and I think in order to make such a long film you have to include some fillers, such as music and dancing. These musical scenes provide an opportunity for many more characters or extras to enter the film. Only about five percent of the people shown in this film actually had speaking roles. This tradition also allows us to take a look into the culture of India. I'm sure there are a lot more get togethers in India that include some sort of dance parties. India is the largest producer of films in the whole world and I wouldn't doubt that movies or film making is their primary source of entertainment, which may also explain why they involve so many actors/dancers in their films.