On marriage and infidelity -- Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehana
BREAKING STEREOTYPES: Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehana
Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna
Genre:drama
Director: Karan Johar
Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukerji, Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Amitabh Bachchan
Storyline: Dev and Maya fall in love. But they are married. And not to each other.
Bottomline: Karan tries to sugar-coat a bitter-pill.
Shyam Benegal, during the International Film Festival of India last year, observed that Indian filmmakers start out with something that caught their attention from Hollywood, and in the process of setting it in the Indian context, end up making something that has no resemblance whatsoever to the original.
`Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna' (`KANK') has a few resemblances though. If `Closer' is about two American women in London, `KANK' is about two Indian women in New York. `KANK' too begins with a literally accidental meeting and gets into the thick of drama when an angry husband asks his wife if she slept with her secret lover.
Away from earlier works
But for these two scenes that give you a deja vu of Mike Nichols' `Closer' (starring Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen) and the premise of two couples whose lives get inter-twined, the rest of `KANK' is a fairly original screenplay, which sees Johar take a couple of steps away from his first two melodramatic (yet effective) outings.
The sensibility in this is more restrained (it's `Kal Ho Naa Ho' more than `Kuch Kuch Hota Hai,') as we see Johar attempting a more mature representation of adults and relationships. Though he manages to achieve that well in the key confrontation scenes, you never get a `Closer,' realistic look at the complexity of relationships.
The chance encounters between the characters are so many that you will wonder if all of New York City bumps into the other, and in pairs. The predictable stock of much mush, corn and contrived situations makes it all the more difficult to digest.
Preity Zinta as Rhea and Abhishek Bachchan as Rishi are backed by well-etched out roles, come out of the film with their heads held high.
While Preity breathes life even into what could have been a tough stereotype, Abhishek Bachchan in the best-written role in the film steals every frame, along with his player-father Sam (Amitabh Bachchan) introduced purely for comic relief and the mandatory patriarchal advice.
Shah Rukh Khan looks appropriately tired mouthing similar lines to similar characters in similar movies. But this time, his tired, cynical look is probably intentional as the King Khan plays Dev, a bad loser in love with a self-centred school teacher, Maya (Rani Mukherjee). American society is known to be more progressive and yet the Hollywood take on the same subject chooses to take a more punitive angle on infidelity.
In `KANK,' though the lines paint them as selfishly human, the visuals and the score project them as innocent people who had no choice but to fall in love.
The cinematic grammar including the star iconography associated with Karan Johar's brand of cinema ensures that this bitter pill of a love story is distastefully sugar-coated.
The director ends up sanctioning infidelity just because Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee cannot be shown as the villains.
The fact that screenwriters Shibani Bhatija and Karan Johar flesh out Preity's and Abhishek's roles well enough works to the film's disadvantage because you know that they both were loyal to their partners. It is that unjustified act of infidelity that will make `KANK' one of the most-discussed films of the year. How sacred is a committed relationship and the institution of marriage? When do you know when to give up when things are not working out and when do you try to work it out? That's also where `KANK' succeeds. It breaks certain stereotypes.
SUDHISH KAMATH
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