PART THREE

THE ISSUE

The three films I have analysed in this blog all deal primarily with the nature of love and what marriage does to one's understanding of it. All three films also deal with the question of a woman's choice where choosing her marriage partner is concerned. And all three films are being equally clever in answering this question.

The narrative in these films plays out in such a way that one feels that indeed it is the woman who has chosen to stay with the husband at the end of the film. The characterisation also makes it convenient for the heroine to make her choice. The husbands are shown as understanding, non-interfering, self-sacrificing men who do not impose on the heroine in any way and approach their relationship more with the emotion of a safe friendship. This almost reduces the earlier relationship in the film to a mere infatuation. So we get the sense that the heroine had an option and she chose the right man. But actually the film has short-changed us on that one. To have the heroine step out of the marriage and choose her lover would have been an impossible thing to accept in keeping with convention. Its better to keep the traditional notions of family and marriage intact and not do anything drastic in the film so that the audience goes home happy and one's film is a hit. A film that advocates stepping out of the marital bonds will only come much later - Karan Johar's Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna - and would end up doing average business. So all three film-makers have taken the easy way out by not upsetting convention in any way.

Swami includes an actual debate on choice in its script, but Mini does not even seem to choose Shyam at the end of the film. She makes a split second decision to leave her marital home with Naren and even goes to the station with him. But all Shyam has to do is to follow her there and request her to come home with him, and she meekly agrees. In the film Mini is narrating the story to us and in the final frame, we see her in Shyam's home, sitting on her bed with a look of despair on her face. She has clearly not made the happy choice either since she is not really respected or treated well by her husband's family.Her husband too is rather saintly in the face of this unfair treatment and does not object. The film, thus, seems to say that whether Mini had chosen Naren or Shyam, her life would have been equally complicated.

WSD is the cheekiest when it comes to subject of Maya's choice at the end. The director adopts a 'film-within-a-film' approach to play out the events of the second half. After Maya has told Anand her story and about her love for Prem, he sets out on a mission to locate him and make sure that he and Maya are together. He does finally find Prem by coincidence builds a friendship with him on the pretext of being a film producer and hiring Prem as the music director for his film. The story that he narrates to Prem as the story of the film is actually what Maya has told him about her life. He also tells Prem that the climax is not clear as yet as he has not decided whether Maya should stay with her husband or go with the lover.

The actual climax of the film involves an elaborate discussion on what the heroine of Anand's "film" should choose. According to Prem, she should either stay with the husband or commit suicide(!). Anand suggests that she should be reunited with her lover. Prem shakes his head and says that the audience would never accept this ending as it would go against Indian naitikta and sabhyata. Then Anand makes a pseudo-feminist argument about a woman's right to choose and that is would be inhuman for her to stay married to someone she does not love. Prem is still unconvinced, but agrees as he feels it would not be wise to disagree with the producer of the film. In the end when Maya does choose to remain with Anand, Prem endorses her decision by saying that an Indian woman would never make such a choice and that divorce is a Western import, heartily declaring that even though his ideas may be old-fashioned, but "Old is gold".

With this kind of a climax, WSD is the most non-commital of the three films in closing the discussion that it starts at the beginning of the film. The film-maker has made it all too convenient by appealing to Indian culture and tradition, closing the debate by saying if we already have certain rules in place why defy them. Tradition, therefore, becomes a blanket solution to all the problem the film puts forth.

My favourite among all three is Hum Dil... not just as a film, but also the way in which the conflict is resolved in the end. No rules are broken here as well, and tradition is also left intact in the end, but at least the film does not project itself as dealing with weighty philosophical and social questions of choice and marriage. It pans out simply as a love story, suggesting that Nandini was in love with Sameer, but that has moved on and has now come to love Vanraj. One could say that maybe the film is too simplistic, which true. But my only argument is that it doesn't pretend to be complex. The other two films pretend to be complex and then do nothing about the complexity. Swami further problematizes the issue and WSD offers a too simple solution to it.

All three films are interesting to watch, though, and also to compare. I'm not indicting any for being similar in terms of story, as this is the most interesting aspect of comparing the three films. Same question, different answers.