#54 Jab Tak Hai Jaan

February 21, 2021
Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012) ****
Amazon Prime
Free
Bollywood Club

“I will not forget you,
Not as long as I breathe,
Not as long as I live…”

Bollywood Club! Bollywood Club! The third Sunday of every month is Bollywood Club, and I look forward to it all month.

January was an anomaly, because we watched a different leading actor, but in February we are back to Shah Rukh Khan. SRK is just about the biggest male Bollywood star there is, and we loves him and nearly always watch one of his movies. This month it was Jab Tak Hai Jaan (As Long As I Live).

Okay, buckle up, because this film, like most Bollywood films has All the Plot and All the Genres. Very few of them are just one thing for three hours, and Jab Tak Hai Jaan is a war/action/comedy/romance/tragic/drama/musical/amnesia film.

The film starts out as The Indian Hurt Locker, and SRK plays Samar, a bomb disposal expert who never smiles or wears any protective gear. He meets Akira (Anushka Sharma) by saving her from drowning, giving her his jacket, and then just riding away on his motorcycle. She finds his diary in the pocket, so there is an hour long flashback where we find out why he is a gloomy Gus.

And a decade go, there was no gloom! He was a happy street busker in London who meets a gorgeous rich Indian woman, Meera (Katrina Kaif), and falls in love with her. She is engaged to be married to a man she likes, but does not love, to please her father, because he was so sad when her mother left him for another man, years before.

She is kind of a tight-ass, but Samar loosens her up by taking her to an underground club where there is much singing and dancing, and she falls in love with him, but is still going to go through with the marriage. But then, plot happens!

This is maybe a third of the plot, there is just a shed load of stuff that happens, including SRK’s very first screen kiss after over 70 films! Until recently there was no kissing in Bollywood films, but SRK avoided it even after it was allowed, because he felt uncomfortable. But the smooch is integral to the plot, so it happens, and is awesome.

How I judge how much I love a Bollywood film is whether I say, “I could watch this every day!” at the end of it, like I did with War and Rab Ne Baba Di Jodi (the first one I saw). I don’t know that I particularly want to watch Jab Tak Hai Jaan every day, but I’d watch it three times a week, maybe four. And that ain’t bad.