Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera Turned 10 July 5

In  Vikramaditya  Motwane’s  recent highly lauded  webseries Jubilee on Amazon, the character of the  wannabe  star from the 1940s played by  Sidhant Gupta, seemed  to be  a direct descendent  of Ranveer Singh in Motwane’s Lootera, which was released  on 5 July, 2013.

Based on O’Henry’s short story The Last Leaf  , Lootera took the basic heartbreaking plot premise—of a  man who convinces his dying  wife  that as long as  the tree  outside  her window will  have even a single leaf  she  won’t die—and padded it up with  a story that tended to oscillate between  the  incredible  and the  emotional.

The   film ,  though not devoid  of  merit, was  finally not  convincing enough in  its  dramatic  thrusts.

Shot in Dalhousie (Kashmir)  the  shooting had to be  cancelled  due to heavy  snowfall . The  producers  lost  1  crore rupees. When Kashmir was snowed under, Ranveer insisted on going alone  to Dalhousie  to check out the density of the snow. He insisted on exploring the snow-scape with the unit. He stayed outdoors in the freezing cold for one whole day and returned convinced that the  Dalhousie schedule would have to be  postponed. Sonakshi was warned just in time before she left for Dalhousie.

The snowfall in 2012  Dalhousie was  the most intense in 17 years.  About 40 percent of the Ranveer-Sonakshi romance in Lootera unfolded  in the snowfall. So there was  no getting away from the snow. The rest  was shot in Purulia.Sonakshi  braved through the  rough outdoors. Her father Shatrughan Sinha is rightly proud  of Sonakshi’s  performance. He thinks  it’s her best to date.

Ranveer Singh’s  1950s look  was supposed  to be  a fusion  of Dev Anand and  James  Dean.He looked like neither.

That’s okay.  Lootera  was  nothing like what O’Henry imagined  the  story to be.