Here's what columnist Shobhaa De had to say about recently released Bollywood film Raanjhanaa which opened to good reviews from critics and audiences alike. Movie has also did good business at the box office and managed to get the hit tag.
So...everybody is going ga-ga over a movie about a demented stalker harrowing an innocent victim, and calling it a sweet love story! Excuse me! 'Raanjhanaa' is such a ridiculously confused film, it really requires better (and deeper) analysis than the mindless raves it has received. While there was something deliriously charming about the zany 'Tanu weds Manu' made by the same bloke, this one is seriously psychotic. The problem with Raanjhanaa is in the subliminal message it sends out. The movie actually glorifies a dangerous social crime (stalking) and makes a hero out of a man who ruins so many lives because the girl he loves does not love him back!
What starts off as an innocent schoolboy crush on a neighbourhood beauty is soon converted into a full blown obsession that will stop at nothing - not even death. Dhanush (talented, vaghera-vaghera ...BUT!) is shown hounding poor Sonam (a commendable performance) in a manner so crude and relentless, it is a wonder she doesn't push him off the nearest cliff.
Not only does the lovestruck Kundan embarrass Zoya over and over again, he refuses to take her firm, unambiguous 'no' for an answer. Of course, the plot goes all over the place trying to convince us about the nobility of his single minded passion. But wait a minute - the beautiful, educated Muslim girl simply ain't interested in this scrawny, scruffy, semi-literate son of the local Hindu priest. Doesn't he get it? Everybody else does. Not only does he not get it, he refuses to let the poor girl be.
The rest of the story is just too absurd to merit further discussion. The main point is that the character of this psychohero is elevated, romanticized and projected as the ultimate lover...who will go to any extreme for the girl he has unilaterally committed his life to. Never mind that she really doesn't care a fig about him, uses him ruthlessly and generally treats him like a serf. Wrists are slashed, the girl's fiance attacked and left to die, and several other highly contrived situations get injected into the script in order to depict perfect, unconditional love. Bakwas!
Audiences across India are going home teary and touched by Kundan's maha 'sacrifice' in the end. Now, if only Kundan had taken the hint and stopped harassing Zoya right at the start, so many lives would have been spared. 'Raanjhana' (I had no clue what the title stood for... I assumed it was the heroine's name spelt South Indian style), is many films clumsily rolled into one. The narrative is so scrambled, one wonders what the director had in mind - is it a doomed Hindu-Muslim love story significantly set in Varanasi? Or a statement film about student politics in Delhi?
The first half is about an obsessive, aggressive stalker harrowing the object of his desire. The second half is devoted to a half-assed political commentary. Through all this convoluted mess, Dhanush the Stalker remains crazily focused on tormenting Sonam and her folks. Is this fair? Is this even love? What sort of a signal is the film sending out to all those misguided romeos who think it is perfectly okay to fling acid on a girl's face for having the gal to reject romantic overtures and improper attention?
Kundan's 'love' is entirely one sided and delusional. We read about similar stories in the press all the time. In each case, it is the girl who suffers, through no fault of hers. In the movie Kundan demolishes several families when Zoya chooses someone else. Hello? Isn't that her sole prerogative? Sorry.
The film may gross 200 crores for all I care. And the actors may walk away with several awards. But Raanjhanaa is a pretty nasty film only because it tries to make a martyr out of a selfish, immature, violent and unstable man who thinks nothing of destroying the peace of mind of an innocent victim who doesn't love him. The 'solutions' offered are to slash your wrists when things don't work out. Well, at the end of this wretched experience, I sure as hell was ready to slash mine.
Director Aanand Rai defended his second release saying:
"How do I respond to this? I don’t even want to react to an opinion so absurd and myopic. Has she seen Varanasi, felt its pulse? Does she know what the city is all about? Does she understand the feelings of the young in the small cities where two people still cannot go out on a date? There’s a life beyond metropolises that some people who have grown up in the metros cannot understand. And I don’t see the need to explain myself to them. It’s different cultural breeding. In a small town pursuing a girl, until she says yes, is a sign of true love? How I treat the theme of love is entirely up to me. I don’t discuss how she (Shobhaa De) treats love in her books and column. For some people smooching even in public is normal. For my characters even saying, ‘I love you’ is an uphill task. You handle your relationships your way. I’ll treat mine the way I want to.”
“He dies a hero. What I love about may hero Kundan is that he dies happily for love. I could’ve brought him back to life. But I don’t think Kundan wanted to come back. There had to be a closure to his love. When I visited Chandan theatre, the gatekeeper kept asking me, ‘Kundan will come back na. He’s in a coma? He’ll return in the sequel? His face fell when I had to cruelly tell him Kundan was not in a coma and that there would be no sequel. Nobody wanted Kundan to die. But Kundan didn’t want to live. Everyone except one columnist seems to have taken Kundan home. He refused to go home with her."