Monday, October 19, 2009

On Hum Aapke Hain Kaun

In 1994, Rajshri Productions released a film called Hum Aapke Hain Kaun! (Sooraj Barjatya), which turned out to be one of the biggest blockbusters of its time. This film was a remake of another Barjatya production called Nadiya Ke Paar, which released in 1982. The latter had the same storyline, but all resemblences ended here. Apart from the story, both films are widely different from each other in terms of treatment and structure. It is this change and its implications that I would like to concentrate on in this blog.

Hum Aapke... released at a time in Hindi commercial cinema when cinegoers were being fed on a constant dose of rewokings of the "angry young man" films of the 70s, rich-boy-poor-girl romances and other dregs of the formula film. Barring a few films, nothing very innovative was happening on the commercial film scene in Hindi cinema. The whole-hearted acceptance that Hum Aapke... got made it possible for a different kind of formula film to emerge - the wholesome family entertainer, complete with popular songs, candyfloss situations and stars who also brought home a conformist moral message of family bonding. This film has not influenced its successors in terms of innovation in storyline or charactertisation, but in terms of the social and inter-personal milieu that it depicts.

Most films of the 1980s and early '90s concentrated on the rich-poor class divide. The rich class consisted of the oppressors - powerful because they had money and were willing to do anything to protect it and make more of it. In terms of morals, they were ready to stretch their limits. The poor class on the other hand, was deprived, but morally upright. Any mingling of the two classes by marriage was strongly opposed by both sides. And here stepped in the main conflict in the film - a clash of the classes.

Hum Aapke... pretty much altered the kind of visibility that the poor class had in films, reducing them to unimportant minor characters or making them vanish altogether. It represented a homogeneous world - inhabited only by the well-off, who were no more shown as morally lacking in comparison to the poor. They, in fact, became the keepers of morality, reinforcing the theme of an ideal and complete family.

This kind of homogeneity still exists in most films of today, for example, in films of Karan Johar and Farhan Akhtar, where the poor have very less representation or are not visible at all. When such a change takes place in terms of the world that such films depict, it also changes the element of conflict in the film. There are no villians - evil is not personified in a single person or a group of people (putting actors like Gulshan Grover and Amrish Puri out of work!) - the villian here is simply circumstance. There is no "clash" between two dissimilar worlds, and only the presence of money makes this possible. And now that we don't have to worry about where the next meal comes from, we can freely (and guiltlessly) pay more attention to our love lives and our relationships with our parents. So now the conflict has become interpersonal and introspective, rather than social.

Of course, the film left behind many obvious remnants - like the mandolin/violin totting hero of future Aditya Chopra films or the fascination for showing North Indian wedding rituals in great detail. Most Karan Johar films pay explicit tributes to Barjatya (the dumb-charades scene in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or Hrithik Roshan singing "Wah wah Ramji..." in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham).

It is interesting to note here that the Hum Aapke's orginal version was set in a village, not in a palatial bungalow. Would the same have worked in 1994?

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Rab Ne Bana Di Superman

I remember watching Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (Aditya Chopra, 2007) and completely enjoying the experience. I also remember most of my friends trashing the movie. They just couldn't figure out why Tanni (Anushka Sharma) fails to recognise Raj as her husband Surinder (both played by Shah Rukh Khan). How much of a difference can a missing moustache really make? Although I'm not the most credulous person, I bought it. And so did thousands of other people, which is why Aditya Chopra's come-back vehicle was a resounding success. Perhaps it's because when it comes to films, I'm always more willing to suspend my disbelief.

But the intention of writing this piece was not to defend Rab Ne.... The film does have its weak moments, which are not a few. Maybe the film would have been more acceptable to my friends if they had only shifted their logic of perception.

For me, the film was not a love story set in "authentic" Amritsar, depicting "realistic" people of small-town India. This film was simply a fairytale - a superhero film, if I may say so - where all Suri has to do to change his personality, to go from zero to hero is to remove his shirt.

I'll explain my point with an analogy. We readily undergo the transformation that Superman undergoes in all his films. So there are no qualms about seeing a geeky, bespectacled Brandon Routh (or the old school Christopher Reeves) change into the beefy, handsome man who can fly. I see Suri's transformation in the same light.

He removes his spectacles, only to be bestowed with superpowers. So the shy, reticent Suri transforms into the loud and brash Raj - the eternal Romantic film hero. There is also a moment in the film (a scene in the song 'Haule Haule') that shows SRK take a flying pose as hedons a cape.

In real life, this sudden switch is hard to believe, yes. But then this film is really not realistic. Then what is trying to say? In my opinion, the film is about:
  • aspiration, the grass always seeming to be greener on the other side.
  • the alter ego, which we try and keep from others, but which escapes our hold in moments of weakness.
  • the age old adage that clothes maketh the man.

And interestingly, our desi Lois Lane does not fall for the dashing superhero. Instead she falls for the humble Suri. So perhaps the film also advocates simplicity as a virtue.

Viewing the film from this perspective may just make it easier to take in. And probably, this is the film's greatest weakness - it pitches realism, where it should have pitched fantasy.