Imtiaz Ali’s Jab We Met didn’t create a buzz when it came out. Yet, looking back, it’s a film that has aged incredibly well, creating a legacy for the filmmaker and Shahid Kapoor. For Kareena Kapoor Khan, though, it literally changed the trajectory of her whole career.
Jab We Met happened at a low point for both its leads. Shahid Kapoor’s most recent film, Fool and Final, did not perform well at the box office, while Kareena Kapoor Khan, too, had faced disappointment with four out of her last six films failing to make an impact. Shahid Kapoor was one of the few who immediately recognized the film’s potential when most people, including Kareena, went in with very little expectation.
In fact, Kareena had said as much during an interview. She said that even during shooting, her focus was primarily on her preparations for Tashan, which she considered the bigger film. It had a bigger banner, budget, style, and locations. Conventional wisdom said that Tashan would be the rocket that would lift her. As it turned out, while Tashan did not meet box office predictions or garner much affection from fans, Jab We Met achieved significant popularity and critical acclaim.
The Magic of Memorable Dialogues
Good films stay with you hours after they’ve ended. Great films, though, find a way of seeping into everyday life, with famous lines filling up your everyday vocabulary. While it did well, Jab We Met wasn’t the year’s biggest hit. It wasn’t even in the category of some of the other hits of 2007, such as Om Shanti Om, Chak De India, and Taare Zameen Par. But ask anyone to recall a favorite dialogue from those movies, and you’ll get a lot of long pauses and awkward shrugs. That’s what happens to scripts that are manufactured as opposed to those that feature organic, real, and authentic emotions that leap off the paper.
Raise your hand if you’ve used the repurposed the following phrases in you’re everyday life:
“Mein apny favorite hoon.”
“Bhatinda paily vaari ayeo?”
“Yeh saalay londay mujhay gannay ke khait dekhana chahtay hain.”
“Akeli larki khulli tijori hoty hai.”
“Mein ik jhallak mein pehchaan gaya tha.”
And so many others.
Also Read: Why Imtiaz Ali’s Tamasha is Considered a Modern Cult Classic
The Movie About Nothing
In writing off the movie, many actors who had turned it down had said that Jab We Met had no plot, something Imtiaz Ali confessed. In that aspect, the movie already had something in common with Seinfeld, one of the most popular sitcoms ever.
What does a show about a standup comedian living in New York with an eccentric neighbor, a neurotic best friend, and an ex-girlfriend who he still hangs out with have in common with a movie about a depressed and suicidal industrialist meeting a girl running away with a picture of Babaji, a stuffed toy and a suitcase, to marry the love of her life?
On the surface, both are about nothing. One talks about things such as the position of the second button on a shirt or whether the people eating their Mars bar with a fork or knife are cool. The other shines a light on ordinary life’s whimsical and hilarious side. There are so many to choose from that one doesn’t know which one to pick and which gem to leave out. Haggling over the price of a water bottle and missing the train, and being mistaken for a hooker outside a railway station. The ticket collector, going off on a tangent and lamenting about his faded manhood and the dangers of being a ‘khuli tijori’.
You can’t make such stuff up.
Just like Seinfeld, the show based on the personal experiences of comedians Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, Jab We Met has a palpable and transformative undercurrent of authenticity and sincerity. Imtiaz Ali, the director, has alluded to it himself, calling it “almost like a friend he once knew very well.”
Speaking to India Today, he said, “The film was written more like a self-entertainment thing at the time. My first film took five years to make (Socha Na Tha), and in those four-five years, I had to keep myself busy, so this is when that happened.
“I knew there was something good about it even then, but I was always embarrassed about the story. Because it is a film about nothing (in terms of plot). What is it? How do I sell or pitch it? I didn’t know even if it was worth pursuing. Also, it is a highly rejected film, in terms of acting, producing, etcetera.”
And that’s where the magic of Jab We Met lies. In mirroring life’s apparent randomness and lack of purpose, the film tells us to run after every train with a smile and a firm belief that everything will turn out well. What made millions of us relate to the movie, watch it every weekend with family and friends until we could deliver every dialogue with the perfect pitch and dialect, was that we could all relate to and aspire to the movie’s driving force. Geet.
Kareena’s Character Spoke To The Geet in Us
Whether it be the first time we, the audience, meet Geet, as she narrates her philosophies to a flabbergasted and overwhelmed Aditya, or when she berates the shopkeeper at the railway station for the price of a water bottle or a dozen other incidents throughout the first half, there’s an innocence and naivety to her persona that softens the atmosphere. You almost feel her optimism seeping through the screen, convinced that nothing bad can happen because Geet has spoken to her Babaji. Geet’s Jab We Met outfits are a further extension of her personality. Each ensemble cements her as an instantly memorable and wholly relatable figure.
She’s a prime candidate for the term TMI. We all know that one person who will tell you their whole life story when all you had asked for was the time. In fact, there’s a bit of a Geet in all of us; we’d lost her somewhere during life’s harsh and sometimes depressing ups and downs. We can relate to Aditya, and yet it’s Geet who is the catalyst. She invokes an almost nostalgic feeling for a time and a place when just a smile and a positive attitude, an unshakeable confidence in the power of one’s own belief, could turn everything our way.
During her appearance on Neha Dhupia’s talk show, Kareena Kapoor Khan reminisced about Geet. Discussing the lasting influence it has had on her career as well as the enduring legacy of the film, she said: “Jab We Met completed 16 years in the cinema. I think Geet will always be special to everyone because you have never really seen a character who is so honest, soo loving, a girl who wants to chase her dreams. Geet, in a way, was aspirational and inspirational, and everyone wanted to be her or be like her. She is evergreen for generations and all times, and Geet will always be in me. It kind of transcends all generations – Jab We Met is like a garam dal chawal on a rainy day and that’s what Jab We Met will always be special.”
We couldn’t agree more.
