Review of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) by Edith N — 13 Sep 2009

Silly Bride, Respect Is for Boys!

The most chilling sequence in this movie, which of course isn't supposed to have any, is when the bride's mother (Farida Jalal, I think) sits down to have a talk with her daughter (Simran, played by Kajol) about the boy she's loved in Europe before returning to Punjab for her arranged marriage. The mother tells Simran that, when the mother was a little girl, she was brought up to believe that girls were equal to boys. Then, her father made her sacrifice her education for her brothers, who needed it more. One sacrifice led to another, and she eventually realized that it was all a woman's life was made of. Sister, daughter, wife, mother--all is sacrifice. Therefore, Simran must bend her will to her father's and marry Kuljit (Parmeet Sethi), who mentions once that he'll marry Simran and leave her in Punjab while he goes off to London and fools around. What Simran wants is not and will not be important. She must fulfill her father's wishes and keep her father's promise.

Simran, on the other hand, has been raised in London. Her father left Punjab twenty years earlier, and Simran and her sister, Rajeshwari (Pooja Ruparel), are more English than Indian in their attitudes. Her father, Chaudhry (Amrish Puri), has betrothed her in her childhood to the son of his best friend, Ajit (Satish Shah). (I think; I'm not clear on some of the names, and the credits on IMDB are very bad.) It doesn't matter, as her mother tells her, what she wants. On the other hand, she convinces her father to let her spend a month in Europe with some friends. On this trip, she meets the seriously obnoxious Raj (Shahrukh Khan), who seems determined to make her life miserable for all he's hitting on her so madly. In fact, that seems to be part of the problem. He can't seem to get the concept of "unwanted advances." Somehow, though--and the situation seems to include getting her roaring drunk--they fall in love. Then, her father takes the whole family off to Punjab to get her away from her Western beliefs and love and so forth, and Raj follows her.

I was horrified by a lot of things in this movie that are clearly serious cultural differences. For example, we are clearly intended to think that Simran is far too uptight. She only accepts Raj's advances under the influence of cognac. Mostly, she treats Raj as though he's simply a nuisance. The thing is, though, he is a nuisance. He annoyed me to the extent that I was wondering how the Punjabi arranged husband could possibly be worse, and I knew he had to be, because it's the way this storyline progresses. Only Raj is being so obnoxious in one store that he makes them both miss the train. He is a jerk to her father at the beginning of the movie, before he ever meets her. However, we are supposed to see him as the desirable one, the man she ought to marry. Obviously--and again, it's not as though the basic frame of this story is original or anything--Simran must go from disliking him intensely to falling in love with him. However, the film requires change in her that I don't really think is necessary.

I also have to tell you that I find his change more than a little cynical. We'll leave aside the total improbability that he can find her in London. We'll even ignore the greater improbability that he can find her in Punjab. Whatever. It's a movie. But once he gets into the family's awareness, I find most of what he does contrived. He sets up a totally ludicrous trap to worm his way into the fiancé's good graces. Once there, he drops the fiancé's family for the purposes of worming his way into Simran's family's good graces. I do find it vaguely honourable that he refuses to elope with her, though it gets silly after a while. I guess it's supposed to be character redemption, though it would take a lot more than that to redeem him in my mind. However, I think it's quite obvious that his interest in Simran's family is not in any kind of idea that it might be nice to get along with Simran's family. It's trying to pry her father's approval loose.

I don't have a lot of experience with Bollywood. Probably I will watch more as time goes by. I do find it interesting, at least from a cultural perspective, and at very least this was a beautiful film--and I don't just mean Kajol, who is a hugely striking woman. (Shahrukh Khan? Not nearly as attractive.) Watching her in the white dress run through the mustard field is definitely worth it, and much of the clothing is simply gorgeous. Okay, some of the colours are a bit much to my eyes, but still. And I have to admit that I find the musical numbers entertaining if nothing else--the one where Raj manages to pull backup singers/dancers out of thing air is vastly amusing. (The wedding one is actually a lot more believable.) It's just that, as I look back on this movie, I wonder which I will remember more. Beautiful woman in white running through mustard fields or beautiful mother explaining to her daughter that she can't have the life she wants because her father's wishes are more important?