by
User Not Found | May 24, 2016
After winning hearts of people in major parts of the world, Yash Chopra's Love Legend, VEER-ZAARA now casts its magical spell on Germany. After its successful screening in the 55th Berlinale Film Festival, Veer-Zaara was recently released in the mainstream German market, to a housefull audience. It has not only been appreciated by cinema lovers there, but the German press also has showered their praises on the film. Some press excerpts are highlighted below.
(Translated into English)
"[Yash Chopra's] passionate pleading for international understanding, female emancipation and romantic love is the art of overwhelming cinema in ultimate perfection - an exhilarating, unrestrained sentimental, terrifically composed symphony of colors, images and sounds, which integrates highly accomplished and quite rarely song sequences, which are so characteristic for Indian cinema, and makes us cry our eyes out. Compared to these three hours of opulence, entertainment and heart rending passion 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'Titanic' appear almost dry and boring."
tz münchen
"An unscrupulous cinema-pleasure, a feast of great emotions"
"Such a movie would also be a good deed between an Israeli and a Palestinian, between a Turk and a Kurd, in northern parts of Ireland or North Korea. Bollywood is utopistic. This time its message is not."
Der Tagesspiegel
"More entertaining, opulent und heart rendering is hardly possible"
Hamburger Morgenpost
"Clear messages, and performed full of drive as always and without any dread of sentimentality"
Ticket Berlin
"A great melodrama"
"In a way every scene starts off at zero, in every scene you experience a small world of its own, due to excessive camera movement."
"The emotions are as intensive as in the great novels of the 19th century, from 'Wuthering Heights' to ‚The Count of Monte Christo'."
Süddeutsche Zeitung
"Shah Rukh Khan is fighting, loving, singing and suffering as a pilot between India and Pakistan."
"VEER & ZAARA does not judge one-sided; no country gets cursed, both religions, Hinduism und Islam, are valued respectfully."
Die Welt
"Only Bollywood can tell such a super-melodramatic love story"
"The classic Romeo-and-Juliet-theme [...] is transferred into an updated political dimension and conveys a humanistic message"
Tip Berlin
"Life is shattered to pieces, true love seems lost forever, there is no justice anymore. What is to be done in such a case? Put paid to your exasperating life? No way: put on a nice dress, sing and dance! Welcome in Bollywood, India's fairytale-like movie world-"
"A transboundary and with countless strokes of fate embroided Romeo-and-Juliet-romance [...], which only comes to its gorgeous ending after 20 years and fulminant musical-sequences."
Woman
"VEER ZAARA is one of the greatest modern Bollywood-epics, a bombastic film feast with lots of dancing, singing and romance."
Stadtrevue
"Heart rendering"
TV Movie
"Considering its country of origin VEER & ZAARA presents itself as a highly explosive Indo-Pakistani version of 'Romeo and Juliet', a wild, technically accomplished mixture of musical and epic drama."
In München
"With his pleading for cooperation and the emphasis on similarities Yash Chopra acts as a pleasant counterbalance to the recent trend of giving movies a anti-Pakistani attitude."
Szene Hamburg
"A paradigm for the compatibility of the political-utopian potential and the traditional conformation, which lie within gorgeous Bollywood-entertainment."
taz
"Nowhere else a scene like this is imaginable, when Veer approaches Zaara once more right before the wedding: the circling camera, the pouring rain, the glistening light and the mostly powerful music potentise the act of self-abandonment to a cosmic story."
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
