After having gotten through Baazigar and Karan-Arjun, which were both more fun and less SRKajol than I remembered,  I have finally reached the first real drop dead classic SRKajol film, DDLJ.  And, since it is a drop dead classic, I am moving through it very very slowly.  So much to think about with this one!

(part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, part 5 here, part 6 here, part 7 here, part 8 here, part 9 here, part 10 here, part 11 here, part 12 here, part 13 here, part 14 here)

I left off with SRK talking with his Dad about taking a trip to Europe before he settles down to join his Dad’s business.  Shahrukh offers to put off the trip and start work immediately, but Anupum (by the way, did you know Anupum is only about 10 years older than SRK?  Which I guess isn’t that big of a stretch, if we are assuming that Shahrukh always plays 5 to 8 years younger than he is and Anupum plays 5 to 8 years older, that gives them a 20 to 26 year age gap) forbids this, ordering him to honor his father’s wishes by having the fun that Anupum has denied himself.  There will be an interesting parallel scene to this in a bit between Kajol and Amrish.

But first, a magical missed connection!  And the introduction of Slutty Tina.  I don’t think I am making too much of a assumption about her character by saying that, seeing as she is introduced wearing a black leather mini-skirt.  Interestingly, Kajol is also in a mini-skirt, but a cotton green one.  This is one of the few miss-steps in costuming her in this film.

Her costumes were by Manish Malhotra, who was a college friend of Karan Johar.  KAran called him up and Manish volunteered to join the crew because he thought it would be fun (Karan also worked on costumes, and was an assistant director, and played Shahrukh’s best friend.  He worked hard on this set!).  Manish and Karan would go on to work together again with Kuch Kuch in which there were some definite costume miss-steps.  Not in terms of flatteringness, but in terms of character.  Kajol is dressed perfectly through out, transitioning from a believable tomboy to a modestly dressed adult woman.  But “Tina” in that, played by Rani, is supposed to be a beautiful and slightly westernized, but ultimately sweet and good girl.  But they mess it up by putting her in these ridiculously tiny mini-skirts!  It creates this huge disconnect between her personality and her appearance.  It’s basically the same sort of clothes she wore in Ghulam, filmed around the same time, where she was playing the wild rich girl acting out for her father’s attention, and therefore the clothes were appropriate.  If she wore just slightly more modest clothing in K2H2, it would make her character feel much more real and less like a plot contrivance creation.  In DDLJ, in general, I feel like they completely nailed Kajol’s costumes.  She wears modern western clothes when in the west, because that is where she grew up and feels comfortable.  But her make-up and hair is always low maintenance looking, and her western clothes are still general modest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXN3hkHYVHA

(Notice that Kajol is in her cute and unflattering overalls, Shahrukh is in his character appropriate cool guy outfit, but Rani does not look like the devoted daughter and shy girl avoiding a boyfriend that she has been painted as.  Also, I love this song)

The exception to Kajol’s spot on costumes is for this one scene, where I think they just wanted to make her look more like her friend, so the two girls could believably want to travel together (something I find less and less believable as their trip goes on.  Tina and Kajol are terrible travel partners!  They would never be interested in the same things!).  That is what the dialogue is about, Tina wants Kajol to come with her on a train trip, while Kajol is saying her parents would never agree.  And as they walk, they pass Shahrukh and his friends going the other way having the same discussion.  SRKajol do not meet or even make eye contact at this point, but the film slows down as the pass, making sure the audience marks the connection.

This is a technique that Yashji used over and over again in the first half of Dil To Pagal Hai.  The question is, did he steal it from Aditya or did he suggest it to Adi in the first place?  This leads to a bigger quesiton that comes up a lot with DDLJ and Jab Tak Hain Jaan in particular; how closely do Adi and Yashji work together and should the films really be credited to both of them?  The arguments for the two films are mirrors of each other.  With DDLJ, the argument is that Adi couldn’t possibly be that sophisticated of a filmmaker at such a young age, surely his father was helping with the actual direction, not just the producing.  With Jab Tak Hain Jaan, the argument is that Yashji was much too old to be able to handle all the details of direction, surely his son was actually holding the reigns.  Personally, I believe the official credits for both.  While they may be father and son, and may both have a tendency towards love stories, their visuals and pacing are very very different, and one director cannot be confused for another.

Which you can see just in the way they handled the slow-motion almost meet in DTPH versus DDLJ.  In DDLJ, Adi uses this once, a quick foreshadowing of the actual meeting, and then has them actual meet soon after.  And while he may go into slow motion at this point, the rest of the scene has no other elements of magical realism.  They are wearing reasonable modern clothing, and look like reasonable people.  And they are having similar conversations just because they are about to do similar things.  It is not a sense of destiny, just a practical fact that they are about to meet.  In DTPH, this slow motion is used over and over again, along with constant parallel conversations showing how they are soulmates, and the constant use of gorgeous (if impractical) settings and clothing.  I find Kajol in a mini-skirt much more believable than Madhuri in a constantly rotating series of spotlessly clean pastel chiffon Salwars.  Both father and son are excellent directors, but Adi is more interested in finding the romance in the everyday, while Yashji is more interested in turning the everyday into romance.

(Madhuri’s outfit to go to the mall)

And we follow this magical slow motion with a very everyday kind of scene.  Kajol is talking to her mother over the kitchen counter about this trip she wants to go on.  She explains that it is one month, on Eurorail, all her friends are going.  Farida has a great reaction all “One month?  With friends?  In Europe?  Wonderful!” in a very enthusiastically sarcastic way.  Kajol looks more and more forlorn, because she knows her mother is right, Amrish will never agree to this.  But, she offers that maybe if he is in a good mood when he comes home!

And, back to Shahrukh!  Who is driving a DIFFERENT CAR!  Why?  Why do you make my head hurt like this filmmakers?  Well, actually, before we get there, we are back to Amrish.  Who is closing up his shop for the night when Karan comes up to him.  Oh Karan!  He is supposed to be an obviously loose and disreputable playboy type.  But it is just Karan, in his chunky phase, looking all sweet and sincere as he asks to buy beer.  Karan, you are horrible miscast!  But you look really adorable and I want to pinch your chubby cheeks!

Amrish is not taken with his cuteness, or is a professional enough actor that he is able to react to the character as it was written in the script, not as it was performed.  He turns down Karan because he is closed for the night.  Karan goes back to Shahrukh and Third Friend at the DIFFERENT CAR to tell them he failed, and Shahrukh says not to worry, he will make it work.  By the way, it is well-known that originally this scene was written about condoms, not beer.  Which would be a slightly more believable urgent late night need, but would also have been a terrible character miss-step.  Not least because I would never believe that adorable chubby young Karan would actually need to buy condoms.

(this guy.  Shahrukh, totally, but not Karan)

Shahrukh goes over to Amrish and addresses him respectfully, in Hindi, asking if he can please help out, because he has a splitting headache and just needs some aspirin.  Amrish agrees to help, and turns to unlock the door, at which point, SRK does a little celebratory hand dance real quick before Amrish turns back around.  It’s a very unlikeable character moment, but a really great actorly one!  Even in a little scene like this, Shahrukh finds a way to bring some spark and energy to the screen, to make himself memorable.

Once inside, Amrish gets the aspirin, and says that he is happy to help a fellow Indian.  And then Shahrukh, still in character as the good Hindustani ladka, asks if he can buy something else to offset the cost, how about this case of beer!  Okay, condoms would have been more believable here too, much more likely to be randomly hanging by the register or near the Aspirin than a whole case of beer.  But again, much worse character choice!  So I will allow this.

Amrish begins to get suspicious at this point, and Shahrukh is impatient.  He offers money, even to over pay.  Which of course is the worst possible thing to do, Amrish’s dignity is insulted, he is being treated as just a shopkeeper, whereas in his eyes, this shop is almost sacred, the only thing keeping him tied to England, his great sacrifice and noble quest.  And then it gets even more insulting, because Shahrukh throws his money on the counter and just grabs the beer, knocking over the Goddess Lakshmi in his hurry.  Actually, I didn’t think about it until just now, but the money and the Goddess are a really interesting parallel.  While Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth, she represents the spiritual quest for wealth, wealth as a noble desire.  She has been knocked down and replaced with thrown money, an insulting way of looking at money as just, well, money.  Thereby insulting Amrish’s entire way of life, his sacrifice.

Speaking of insulting Amrish’s entire way of life, back home his wife and daughters are not being the kind of wife and daughters he might want them to be.  This goes back to the whole home/world divide in the diaspora community.  While Amrish just had his desire for the traditional way of life, and maintaining an Indian identity within a foreign country strengthened through his interactions with the world, back home, his wife and daughters are able to enjoy the freedom of modern clothing (Chutki is wearing shorts), as well as modern music on modern electronics (jazz is blasting from the stereo), and the freedom inherent in a Western concept of a household, I don’t think that Chutki and Kajol could dance wildly in the living room, and I don’t think Farida would be allowed to play whatever music she wanted while cooking, if they were living in a joint household.  Experiencing the Western world through the filter of home allows them to select which areas they like and ignore the rest, making them ultimately more comfortable abroad than those who are constantly forced out into full experience of a foreign life-style.

Oh man, I just realized I skipped a scene!  It comes either before the Kajol-Tina talk or after this next bit, but it fits either place, so I will deal with it now instead of going back.  Amrish gets a letter from his friend in the Punjab and smells the envelope ecstatically, enjoying the scent of India.  It’s maybe the happiest we have seen him, he is in his home, surrounded by his Indian family, and reading a letter from home.  As insulated as possible from the outside and as connected as possible to India.  He has Kajol read the letter, tying her to India through her voice.  But she hesitates and stops when she reaches the point where the letter discusses her impending marriage to the son of her father’s friend, instead setting down the letter and leaving the room.  Amrish reads this as “Even in England, I have brought up an Indian girl!  She is shy!”  But Farida sees farther, and realizes that England has touched Kajol, it has allowed her to dream of choosing her own partner, and she goes up to comfort her.  Farida suggests the obvious solution, that maybe the man she dreams of will turn out to be her fiancee.  But Kajol rejects this outright, and says she knows it is someone different, but she will work to put away such dreams.

There are two interesting theories one can draw from this scene.  Well, that I draw from this scene.  First, that Kajol is so sure her dream man is not her fiance, is an early indication that the wild beer drinking Shahrukh is closer to her ideal than he appears at the moment.  All she knows of her fiance is that he is Indian.  And that is enough to tell her he is not the man she loves.  She wants someone a little free-er, a little less traditional, someone who will let her be all she has been able to be in England and could not in India.  So far, we have just seen the downsides of Shahrukh’s westernization.  But eventually, we will see how living in the west has broadened his perspective, has made him a more accepting and loving and thoughtful partner.

(Remember, she will later fantasize him in a Rugby shirt, a very British kind out look, this is the man she wants)

Second, maybe we are too quick to dismiss Amrish’s idea that Kajol is reacting as a true Indian girl when she runs from the room in “shyness”.  What exactly is that traditional “shyness” supposed to indicate?  Fear of the unknown?  Struggle with marriage and all the changes it will bring?  Worry over what your husband will be like?  How is that different than what Kajol is actually experiencing?  Maybe it is not so much that she is a different heroine, but that, for once, another character follows the girl who is overcome by “shyness” out of the room and asks her what she is really feeling and thinking and worrying about.

So, that scene happened, whenever it was, back to Kajol and Chutki dancing and Farida joining in from the kitchen!  They hear Amrish coming up the steps and quickly switch the music to a classical piece and curl up with books in the living room.  So perhaps part of Amrish’s eventual over-reaction is the fault of his family?  They have been hiding from him how living in the West has already changed them, making the reveal of their different manner of thinking that much more sudden and unacceptable to him.

Although he is already pretty mad here, probably not the best time to gently indicate that the family enjoys Western living in some ways.  He comes in already lecturing and complaining about Shahrukh’s behavior.  Anupama Chopra has a great analysis of this scene.  The two things I remember about it are, one, in the speech Amrish refers to people like Shahrukh as being homeless, neither here nor there.  A very specific insult for diaspora children.  And he then claims confidently that his daughters are not like that.  It is this security that his own daughters definitely have a place, and there place is within Indian culture, which reassures him.  The second thing Anupama mentioned is that this scene was one of the first shot, and Amrish used it to test Adi.  Going back to what I talked about a few paragraphs ago, remember this was Adi’s very first film, and even during filming, people already though Yashji was going to be doing all the work and Adi was just a front.  So, Adi told Amrish to go halfway up the steps and then turn and deliver his final lines.  Amrish ignored the directions, Adi made him do it again, and told him the reasoning, that he wanted a certain character message and motivation and so on, and Amrish was bowled over by how clearly he had thought out every single aspect of the film, and followed his directions unquestioningly for the rest of the shoot.

Speaking of Anupama, she has a really great analysis of this next scene too, when Kajol is found singing “Om Jai Jagadish” in the morning, dressed traditionally, and convinces Amrish to let her go on the trip.  It’s a lovely scene, and I don’t have much to add to what was already said much better by Anupama (really, read that book!).  All I can think of is to contrast it with the similar scene in K3G when Kareena and Hrithik wake Shahrukh and Kajol by singing the same hymn.  I talked already about how Kajol is such a different conception of the diaspora woman than Kareena, and in fact Kareena is more of a throwback, the woman who is ruined by the West until a Man saves her.  Similarly, in this scene, it doesn’t feel like morning prayers are something Kajol is doing for the first time or even just to win over her father.  He reacts with pleasure, but not surprise.  And Kajol is comfortable enough with the ritual that it seems she has done it many times before and even enjoys it.  Yes, she is using it this time to remind her father what a good daughter she is, but she actually IS a good daughter, and a good Indian woman, even though she was raised in the West.

(Remember, Hrithik even has to correct the words she uses.  Also, I love the Germans!  They have images of everything posted online!)

Amrish gives her permission, tells her to go and enjoy herself.  Just like Anupum did.  Ultimately, both father’s have the same attitude.  As do both children.  Kajol and Shahrukh both offer to ignore their own pleasures and immediately start living their lives in service of their parents.  Both father’s reject this offer and instead encourage them to enjoy a limited amount of freedom first.  But the key is the limit.  This is going to be a time out of place, they will have this trip, and then they will return home to take on adult responsibilities, and change into different people.  What is not expected, is that something might happen on this trip which forces them into adulthood before their arrival home.

And, train!  Karan and Third Friend are waiting for Shahrukh, and realizing they both forgot to wake him up, so of course he is late.  Kajol is running in late as well (I find it completely unbelievable that someone as responsible as her character would miss her train, but I will try to accept this.  Maybe her bus broke down?).  They both run through the train station, just missing each other again as they pass on the way to finding their platform.  Finally, Shahrukh leaps in just in time, then looks out to see Kajol running up.  Their theme music starts, he smiles and lifts his hand to brush back his hair.  She sees him and smiles too, and runs to reach his hand.  Their hands meet and he pulls her in.  It’s magic!

It’s magic for the characters too, I’ll be dealing with their first conversation tomorrow, but I love how this scene, and the whole movie, handles the magic of love at first sight.  Yes, there was something there, immediately, between them.  But it was just a spark, it wasn’t until they truly got to know each other that it was able to grow into something real.  So often in Indian film, characters will go from a first look to a passionate romance with no time spent in between.  Or, they will have an arranged marriage, with the expectation that getting to know one another will inevitably lead to love.  Only very rarely are both sides, the initial magical connection and the slow building of a relationship, given equal weight.  And actually, the other films that spring to mind immediately for me for doing this well, are ones that consciously reference DDLJ, Chennai Express, Humpty Sharma ki Dulhania, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani.