ALI'S FILM SENSE

ESCAPING THE REALITY

Imtiaz’s characters are ambitious and don’t give in to societal standards. He gives us characters who have embraced pain but are trying hard to detach themselves of the harsh reality. These characters portray their true self when they are away from everyone. Be it Geet, Ved, Jordan, Veera- every character is in a place that suffocates them and later runs away from it. This is usually how the character's arc progresses in his movies. In Jab We Met, Aditya leaves everything behind and gets on a train, Geet literally runs away from her house to Manali . In Highway, Veera feels suffocated in the house and the city and finds her peace on the roads. Towards the end of the film, she says, "Main hamesha kehti thi na, ki main bhaag jaaungi yahan se, mujhe sheher mein nahin rehna”. In Tamasha. Ved travels to Corsica, where he gets to be himself, away from the product manager job he does not like. In Harry Met Sejal, Harry has also run away from his home. In Socha na Tha(2005), Imtiaz Ali’s directorial debut, the characters run off at the end to get married and spend time living in the mountains. The characters just want to break free and live for themselves.

THE TIE THEORY AND MIRROR SHOTS

The characters in his films are stuck in situations that make them suffocate and in the same sense the tie represents the feeling of character’s distress. It feels like a chain the character is tied to, trying to break free from the situations they are stuck in. In Jab we Met, a dejected Aditya walks out of his office, takes his tie off and throws it on the ground. This element is recurred in movies like Tamasha (where Ved has to hear an earful from his boss for not wearing a tie) and in the movie Harry Met Sejal, where the tie is not seen when Harry is on the road with Sejal and the tie returns back when Sejal leaves him and he is back to the routine life.

In films, mirrors are used for moments of reflection, obviously, both the physical and emotional kind but there are moments when the mirror shots are used to portray the character’s dual nature or to display the existential crises the character is going through. In most of Ali’s films, the characters are going through some self-analysis or portraying the duality elements. Like in Tamasha, Ved is seen talking to himself in the mirror that shows his different personalities. In the opening scene of Jab We Met, we see Aditya standing in front of the mirror in the washroom. He looks at himself with a look of melancholy and the expression on his face shows that he is blaming himself for his misfortunes. There are similar shots in Harry Met Sejal, Love Aaj Kal, and Rockstar.

Imtiaz Ali On Growing Up With Movies | Just A Story Away 

DID YOU KNOW?

Imtiaz Ali made an acting debut in 'Black Friday'

In Anurag Kashyap's iconic take of the 1993 Mumbai blasts, 'Black Friday', filmmaker Imtiaz Ali had a cameo part and he essayed the role of Yakub Memon.