Pooja Meri Jaan Review: Well-Intentioned

Pooja Meri Jaan sometimes gets heavy-handed, but makes the point clear that any conversation around consent must begin with taking a ‘no’ seriously. That’s a message worth reiterating, asserts Mayur Sanap.

A few years ago, PINK belted out the words ‘no means no’ in Amitabh Bachchan’s resonant voice, and yet we continue to see unpleasant stories around a woman’s consent as Bollywood’s Romeos fail to learn their lessons.

In Pooja Meri Jaan, the 20-something man quite literally plays Romeo in a theatre play. This actor is Aniket (Vikram Singh Chauhan) and the opening scene shows the tragic end of his character.

The film opens on an intriguing note because unlike the Shakespearean hero, here, the love exists only in the mind of one person.

Aniket and Pooja (Mrunal Thakur) are theatre buddies and have been friends for five years. They play lovers on stage, and Aniket has fallen head over heels with Pooja in real life.

He is the kind of guy whose idea of romance comes straight from Bollywood, so even when she makes it clear that she only sees him as her friend, his response is Shah Rukh Khan’s filmi line: ‘pyaar dosti hai.’

Aniket continues to mistake Pooja’s affection for romantic interest and proposes marriage. She rejects him, and he ends his life.

This is where Pooja Meri Jaan taps into that familiar social media narratives that we often see in real life. Pooja is branded the villain and held responsible for Aniket’s death. A case of abetment of suicide is filed against her and she is arrested.

Social Media And Instant Judgement

There are some heavyweight topics that Pooja Meri Jaan juggles with about a woman’s consent, male ego, her agency, the problematic social conditioning men have, and its ripple effects.

Director Navjot Gulati, who has co-written the film with Kanishka Singh Deo and Niren Bhatt, approaches them with enough sensitivity to keep the film from becoming merely a lecture.

There is also something recognisable about its central conflict because we have seen versions of this play out in real life.

One accusation becomes a hashtag, the social media narrative reduces her to ‘Pooja jaisi ladki…’ without anyone really knowing what actually happened.

The name Pooja works nicely too.

It is an ordinary, everyday name that works less like a singular victim and more like a stand-in for any young woman who could suddenly find herself at the centre of such public scrutiny.

Huma Qureshi’s Lawyer

The film occasionally brings to mind the Aneet Padda-starrer recent OTT show Hunkkaar: The Roar, in the way it uses a legal framework to open up a larger conversation about gender roles in our society.

Pooja Meri Jaan builds the similar drama with enough courtroom theatrics while also showing its social implications on Pooja. We see that her friends, relatives, neighbours and online mob have already decided what kind of woman she is.

This is where Huma Qureshi’s lawyer character gets an extra edge.

Her Sana is a common friend, who already knows what was brewing between Pooja and Aniket. But when the tragedy struck, her first instinct is to reprimand Pooja by telling her: ‘You should have handled it better.’

She eventually becomes the ally and represents her in court.

The courtroom portions are where Gulati packages the film’s concerns in a more crowd-pleasing Bollywood format.

Qureshi’s Sana is positioned as the story’s moral and legal compass, but the character is not always convincing. Her frequent sermonising make her feel more like the film’s voice than a person inhabiting the character.

At one point, she even gets an ironic line, ‘yahan koi film nahin chal rahi hai,’ which is amusing because the performance itself slips into soap-opera territory.

Mrunal Thakur Finds Her Ground

There are also moments when Pooja Meri Jaan loses an opportunity to say more through its male characters.

Aniket’s passive-aggressive behaviour is important to the story, and we see him having grown up in the house run by a single mother. But the film never delves into this aspect which otherwise could have given a better understanding of his character’s psyche. We also see him being surrounded by male friends, who come with their own sense of male entitlement.

There is a telling moment when Pooja essentially asks Aniket to back off, but he continues to behave as though her resistance is something he can easily overcome. But again, the writing offers only skewed ideas of such a mindset rather than showing us how such attitudes are formed.

Mrunal Thakur has explored victimhood on screen before, most notably in Love Sonia and in Alankrita Shrivastava’s segment in the second season of Made In Heaven. But here, the film looks at Pooja without a judgemental lens and gives her a sense of agency instead of reducing her to an easy long-suffering victim trope. The actor especially fares better when the film allows her to be reactive rather than merely vulnerable.

Among the supporting cast, Vijay Raaz plays an opposing lawyer with a deeply feudal mindset. There’s almost a pathetic quality to him, but Raaz plays it just right without turning his character into a caricature. Watch him in the court scene where he struggles to decode the meaning of a heart emoji. It is a small moment, but Raaz wins you over despite playing such a repulsive character.

Equally amusing is Sunita Rajwar as the all-seeing police officer, who is fully aware of the murky system she operates in. The Panchayat star once again shows her perfect deadpan timing and delivers the film’s best throwaway line: ‘Aapko auraton se kya problem hai?’

Overall, Pooja Meri Jaan is well-intentioned, if not particularly brave. The drama sometimes gets heavy-handed, but makes the point clear that any conversation around consent must begin with taking a ‘no’ seriously. That’s a message worth reiterating.

Pooja Meri Jaan streams on Z5.

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