Monday, March 16, 2009

Teri Rabne Bana Di Jodi ... Tu Haan Kar Ya Na Kar Yara ...

As part of a review assignment, I watched Rab Ne Banad Di Jodi last because I assumed, I’ve seen it before loved it, so last mein karongi and I will breeze through it honestly I had not bargained to feel intensely attached to the film the second time round. I don’t know why, but the film, just made a girl out of me. I am 35 so can’t really qualify for girl -dom … But I am also single and that after seeing the film … that part of me … the ‘still waiting’ part, felt 21 again … hoping Der Aaye, Durust Aaye … Suri jaisa koi aaye! Surinder Suri made all the Don Juan’s of the world look like paani kam chai, and like, the heroine in the film put it, its probably because like every other girl, what I also truly want is for a man to love me (Noting Hill) like no one has ever been loved before (Rab Ne Banad Di Jodi)

It’s an odd observation, but I truly feel that a film like Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi … could only have come from the Yash Raj Banner. Honestly, many of their films annoy me. According to them, women have nothing better to do than look pretty on terraces, waiting for their princes to shower them with flowers. (DOES NOT HAPPEN!) Yash Raj is a male chauvinistic, women commoditising, cleavage showing, Switzerland loving film production house! The human rights activist that lazily lingers somewhere within my heart, hates how women are portrayed in their films, and hates it even more that they do it with so much panache that it actually elicits an aspiration value in the viewers to be so brain numbingly dumb and beautiful; I am neither! Yet … their films also have a way of making a woman feel so beautiful in short bursts … that those moments can take one’s breath away. It is a sort of psychedelic moment that rather simply separates the head from heart, and the moment that the heart (invariably) takes over … every thing is as beautiful as they want you/ us/ me to see it as! In those moments, I want to be Rakhee of kabhi kabhi, whose husband, says her eyes are like lalteyn … I want to be Rakhee in Trishul, whose hair is untangled by an intensely beaten and unhappy Amitah saying, ‘main thodi dosti thodi mohabbat tum se maangta hoon,’ (Sigh ) I want to hum ‘tere mere hothon pe’ on the valley of Switzerland with a Rishi Kapoor prototype on my arms, or have someone sing ‘mere dil mein aaj kya hai, tu kahein toh main bata doon’ to me or say, ‘aur pass, aur pass’ while tugging at the last shreds of my self control, from the edge of a silver chudi!!! Oh my god! I am sacchi shuddering even as I write this! Maye it is too much info for mass consumption but you know what I mean??? The magic of Yash Raj is a crowd puller and they know it! They tell love stories that make dancing around trees loo desirable. They create romance that makes you want to be young again, love again, hurt again … die a million deaths only to know what it is to live again!

So, have you noticed how … a truly beautiful love story is almost always wrought with a lot of sorrow and pain? In the end you either live to be a fairy tale protagonist (Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, Chandni, Dil Toh Paagal Hai, Sangam, Love Story, Betaab, Etc) or you die and become forever known by your mortally dead, but spiritually undying love, (Heer-Ranjha, Laila – Majnu, Ek Jujey Ke Liye, QSQT) Most people naturally want to be the former. But that invariably means, until the dream ending is here, there’s a lot to pain to be dealt with; it seems to be the price for that must be paid for the elusive “ever after …” not tarnished by mediocrity and boredom; as is the case in most run-of-the-mill love affairs masquerading as stories!

The hero of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Surinder Suri, was not just the hero of the film … He was a hero, period. He was a simple man who probably had a crush on a happy bride-to-be, when fate made her his wife, he almost convinced himself that she was his responsibility and he needed to keep her happy. It was only when he felt that her pain hurt him did he even admit to himself that it was a sort of love, that was doomed to be un requited. To digress, I am reminded of, “Love In the Time of Cholera?” It’s a book I feel, everyone MUST read! The opening line says: “The smell of burnt almonds always reminds me of the fate of unrequited love.” I swear I died a few mini deaths after reading that! (Why do I feel I have said that before?)

Ok Rab Ne … Now for Anushka. It was a splendid debut in my opinion. A newness always brings with it a curiosity driven ‘first look’ audience right? It was a difficult role to portray! It was a strange moment, when you actually should have hated your heroine for telling the hero, Shah Rukh Khan, with his baggage of being the king khan and all, that she can never love him. Yet her pain is just as palpable. Her reasons to live a lie for a marriage do not seem like excuses, and she actually wore the masks of a joyful fiancée before her marriage to a quasi widow on her marriage day, rather convincingly.

Before I watched the film for the first time I did not know what to expect at that point! I felt the next day played out in silence, of him leaving her breakfast, resisting the urge to know twice, deciding against the rose, his shyness at work and the awkward party after was intriguing; one layer after another. But then what, I wondered!!!

When Suri confesses his majboori to his best friend Bobby, and later his super sad wife stepped out of her den to play the perfect hostess, I was super touched. It seemed like a simple enough gesture but if for one moment we are to pout ourselves in Tanee’s shoes and think of the pain and pressure she must have felt, to have lost her lover, and father married a total stranger all in one day added to the tension of appearing amicable before her new husband’s self invited friends! Yet she did it, not grudging it. I think hospitality - which we take so abysmally for granted - is gem every Indian wears in his crown of thorns… or should. It is like a legacy, handed down to us - especially the women folk - without formal training. Think about it, Tanee actually apologises to Shah Rukh for her misplaced anger and promises to do her ‘wifely’ duties with efficiency; which is her way of abdicating herself from the guilt of not loving her husband. It could have been, but it is not, his way of extracting his pound of flesh. Interesting hai na?

Thus begins a one sided love story. Interestingly Shah Rukh (Rather the dialogue writer) hit the nail on the head; saying that he (Suri) reminded her (Tanee) of a painful chapter of her life, so he had to be someone else to be with the real, happy Tanee. Sad as it seems, sometimes the heart plays these games to find love. The angst and the desperation that drove the protagonist to even consider taking such a step, made the hero so lovable to the viewers.

I will admit there is the glaring error of how Shah Rukh is styled and how blind she is that she could not guess it was her husband, etc is rather valid. But if you ignore the obvious and treat the breach as subliminal, then what you get to see, is that even a seemingly ordinary man (Suri) can be more than special and take your breath away! I loved the bike chase the dancing bit and of course the patka surd kids in the church in the Tujhmei rab dikhta hai song!!! Sigh …

In many ways, Tanee fell in love with Suri, not Raj. Though bobby darling wanted to teach Raj to be macho, it was the innate suri-ness that won her over, not the macho-ness! Raj was sincere, madly in love with Tanee, cared about her enough to not enjoy her watching her lose, and arranged for the power of a section of the city to be shut of to tell her he loved her. Awwwww …. I mean I know that was cheesy, but seriously … OH MY GOD! Yet, all of that was actually Surinder Sahni, packaged in a bright box that sported coloured hair, wore tight clothes and flirted shamelessly (all of which she was admittedly annoyed with) The only advantage Raj had over Surinder Sahni, was that he did not come with baggage in Tanee’s eyes. So she heard him out and gave him a fighting chance to make a calculated first impression on her; one that Suri never had!

What was a little weird to me as a viewer and many others that I know of, is that how come, every one, except Tanee and Aditya Chopra, would have preferred to spend more time with Suri not the in-one’s-face raj, as shown in the film! To argue the maker’s case, maybe Aditya Chopra thought his audience come to watch his films, because they could get a glimpse of Shah Rukh’s abs through tight tees, or watch him jhoomo to one filmy number (Which in this case was seeti bajaoing filmy but supremely enjoyable in the from of the very well written, hum hai rahi pyaar ke, phir milenge, chaltey chaltey – seriously who coined that line? Milna padhega!!!) or the trademark sarso da khet shot (Which happened only in this film …. Rare for a Yash Raj film)

By showcasing more of Raj, and less of Suiri, they played it safe … and trounced their own trump card. Sad!

As Raj yelled away profanities and tugged at his snug jeans from under his butt crack, I missed the thehraav of suri. Also I have to say such a connect happened with the boring husband because suri was this rare gem of talent that for some obscure reason, shah rukh chooses to hide under the garish light of his own torch of fame. Suri reminded me of Kabir Khan in Chak De, and Mohan Bhargav in Swades … not because he was similar to them but simply because he was so very different from them! God when will our actors learn that acting and not, tom-tomming star giri will etch their names forever in the hall of fame??? When Suri whispered, ‘Yara Meri Love Story Banade Yara,’ I wanted to hold him and rock him like a mother and wish away his pain! And yet we want this sad looking, moustached, bespectacled simpleton to walk away with the heroine; ironic huh? When Suri fights the sumo wrestler one cringes, when he eats biryani after winning a gol gapa eating competition one smiles happily and sadly. And when he chauvinistically insists that she should love his boring form, you actually nod approval. You want the chauvinist to win … you want love to prevail over all odds, and you actually want to forgive the man … who bends a few rules to make that happen. Because you know, he is not a chauvinist, he is a romantic. Had he been a chauvinist, he’d have as bobby says, slapped her and forced her to be his wife. But he simply loved her with two sides to him... giving her a choice to chose one. For that if he is pig headed about where his own heart lays … allowed hai! A chauvinist would have branded her character less for wanting to run a way with a “paraya mard”! But he loved her so much, that he was willing to be someone else for the rest of his life … to keep her happy. Seriously …where are these men???

Rab ne must’ve done well, because Indian, and I consider myself a rather typical sample for that assumption, as such suckers for sentimentality, emotional tugs, under dog prevalence, fantastic stories that would be unthinkable to the western world … accepted chauvinism, a rural strain where life is really quite different for a city life and at the same is visible in every aspect of living from clothes, speech, intonation, life styles … everything. It’s almost like a parallel civilisation; a sort of dichotomy that I can only assume is not as stark in the developed world, save for Japan! (Again … Asian values kind of overlap) And yes of course … we love happy endings.

Indian love strong bonds in their cinema. Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi had all this in small scenes but large doses: a dying father wanting to see his child ‘settled’ before his death. (Another VERY Indian sentiment), a friend helping his dost, get his wife’s love (novel and efficiently played out), a woman’s dilemma, a husband’s love, and of course an unseen Rab who presumably is the master puppeteer who guides our strings. Indians imply adore that unseen magician. It takes a child like innocence to surrender to the unseen as fervently as we do … to many a thinking people, it seems like a whole load of bull and crap. But personally … the idea of loving someone, because you illogically … but most certainly see a bit of your choice of god … a secular sounding ‘Rab’ in him or her … is as delightful as it is divine. Gauging the success of the film I am glad to note I was not alone in this sentiment.

Many of my friends, peers and colleagues, hated Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. I believe like the unlikely love story, the love hate relationship between the film and some of its favoured viewers, is just as destined, as the fate of its protagonists in it; it strikes a chord, only if it is meant to be!

A few asides:
I am not original in saying this, but the first half an hour and the last half an hour, were the heart of the film!

The sights and sights and sounds of heartland India made me want to give up my job and travel I have felt that desire after ages, after watching a Hindi film. After watching it then what I could do best was … I went and had pani puri … which is what gol gappey are called in Bombay after ages! I rest my case! LOL!

The film reminded me of Cyrano de Bergerac and all the films that have been made with that original them: ‘Sangam, Sajan, Navrang, Satyam Shivam Sundaram …’ have you noticed …all hits!!!

The Golden temple … MUST GO! Though I like the Rehman version of omkar satnam in rang de basanti! My friend Paakhi is right, Rehman; is like every where these says. Love him … hate him … you can’t ignore him! Like people watch film for directors, and actors a whole bunch of audience will soon start thronging theatres just to listen to his composition in Digital Dolby Stereophonic Sound!

To many, a film is just a film …to me it almost never is. It’s a whole experience thingy, where I get to be someone else or feel for someone else. But even for the hard core entertainment seekers, some films just stick like a little magnet in one’s heart was drawn to the iron clasp of a concept … a character … a scene and they are just irresistibly drawn to each other. There’s a hymn in the Novena that has this lovely line … “Senses cannot grasp this marvel … faith must serve to compensate … AMEN”

That is why I said ... Rabne Bana Di Jodi!

2 comments:

  1. At the outset ... I loved Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi! Loved the rose scene - I think it's one of the best and certainly the most subtle scenes I've seen in indian cinema ... something you can watch again and again and sigh over as Suri picks up the rose hesitantly, puts it on the tray, goes to the door,then comes back and puts the rose back in the vase .... aahhhh!!! Surprisingly, both my teenage daughter and I found that scene the most touching! Also surprisingly - for me, at least - my daughter, an SRK fan, loved Suri far more than Raj! So I totally agree that the audiences would have loved more of Suri on show - me, for one!

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  2. Beautiful analysis! I hated Rab ne... and the reason is not because I don't like Romantic movies or of Yash Chopra or because of the story or the direction. My reasons for hating the movie was because of the script. They made it so unbelievable. How a simple Suri transforms to a flirting Raj was neither funny, nor plausible. "Gale se nahiin utara". It just spoilt the whole mood. Amitabh Bachchan has played double roles portraying different personalities in his times with such ease - maybe the Salim Javed of those times were better script writers - that it pains to see Shah Rukh Khan and the Chopras being so let down with the latest generation of the script writers. If only they would have made the transition from Suri to Raj a bit more plausible, the movie could have been more enjoyable. Movie-making is story-telling. If you can't tell the story nicely, then even a classic becomes boring. Indeed it was a great debut by Anushka, the character of Suri was very well-penned, and there were all the trademarks of a typical Yash Chopra movie, yet, the character of Raj left a lot to be desired. If the script had "dum" it would have been a totally different experience for all the yash Chopra fans.

    I don't agree that Yash Chopra production-house is male-chauvinistic. Making a woman look beautiful doesn't automatically grant them that distinction. They have actually be ahead of their times and have set trends in many of their films that have broken the traditional norms. Lamhe (age-differences), Silsila (extra-marital affair), Deewar (mother's importance in Indian families), Hum Tum (male-female relationship tussles), Salaam-Namaste (extra-marital pregnancy) are definitely not male-chauvinistic. They were all ahead of their times. Compare Rab ne... to these, and you can see why Rab ne... falls flat. It's how you present the story that matters and not just what the story is about.

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