Yesterday was the really really important scene, the one that it is worth going through shot by shot and line by line.  Today, some scenes that are still awesome, but not quite peak awesome.

(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, part 15 here, part 16 here)

We go straight from Kajol staring into space/her future at the end of the scene where Shahrukh forces her to confront her own emotions and how little control she has on them, to Kajol outside by the bus, patiently waiting for Shahrukh to come and tell her when they are leaving and where they are going.

It’s an interesting moment to think about spiritual rather than physical control (especially since we are about to go to a church).  In terms the physical realm, Shahrukh has all the power.  Not only can he grab her and shake her, take her clothes off, carry her off, all things we have seen him do in the past few minutes, he can also read a bus schedule, buy tickets, tell her where to stand and when to leave.  All along, Kajol has been fighting this kind of control, all the way back to when they were locked together in the train compartment and she ignored his efforts to open the door, backed away from his body when he sat next to her, snatched her clothes out of his hands.

The last two sequences reached the peak of that, first their fight in the barn, when she confronted her complete inability to take control of her own physical well-being, thanks to an upbringing which never gave her the tools to do so.  And second, their fight that morning, when she actually did resist him physically, in her panic trying to bat his hands away, to avoid his eyes, and he proved that such resistance was futile, that he could easily grab her, shake her, do whatever he wanted with her body.

But in the same scene, she also, finally, learned that her spiritual power over him is much greater than his physical power over her.  He “cannot even dream” of abusing his strength, her virtue as a “Hindustani Ladki” (sp?) is so powerful.  Oh!  Duh!  I just realized, it’s Sita!  According to some interpretations, Sita’s virtue was more powerful than all of Ram’s armies, Raavan was already defeated before Ram even got there.  Not that I think Shahrukh in this is a Raavan figure or anything like that, but the general idea that in the balance of power between the physical and the spiritual, a woman holds the winning card.  That a woman can be alone with a man and maintain her virtue, because that virtue itself gives her a power that will protect her. (this also of course brings up all sorts of “legitimate rape” type arguments that I don’t want to get into, so I will just say that female virtue is stronger than male physical power, assuming that the male is not evil)

And now here we are, with Kajol looking more fragile and small than every before.  Her hair is tamed into two pigtails, her dress is light and small, even her bag is tiny.  She is standing alone, dwarfed by three huge buses in the background.  Meanwhile, Shahrukh comes running up from the opposite side of the frame, wearing layers upon layers, carrying a huge duffel bag on his back and with a hat perched on his head.  Their actual height difference isn’t that great, but the overall effect is to make him appear much larger than her.

But she is the one in control.  Notice, she remains still while Shahrukh runs to her.  Is he directing her, or is he serving her?  Also, notice the direction he travels in the frame, from left to right.  This is the direction people always travel in movies, the destination is to the right and the origin to the left, probably because the eye is used to this order as it is the same direction in which we read (at least, in most languages.  Some day I have to watch an Isreali movie and see if this changes because Hebrew is read right to left).  It is also why, in a stand-off, the hero always moves left to right while the villain moves right to left.  The visual message in this particular scene is that Kajol is the still fixed pointing, the destination of all of Shahrukh’s actions.

Oh, also, petty problem, but she is now in her 3rd outfit since losing her luggage!!!!  How? Where? Why?  Is Shahrukh carrying all her clothes in his duffel bag now?  That really would be true love.

Once he reaches her, their dialogue belies the visuals that show their devotion.  First, he offers her food, then immediately eats it himself (a candy bar), without waiting for her answer.  She pretends to be mad and says “No, I’m not hungry!”  But it’s an anger without bitterness now, she speaks quickly, but openly, there is no furrowed brow or tight body language, like before.  She understands that his seeming insults mask a core of decency, and she has let go of her resentment of his ability to break the rules that she feels obligated to follow.

In the second half of this interaction, Kajol looks off into the distance and, okay, overacts a little bit as she says “Wow!  What a beautiful church!”  Shahrukh hits a perfect note as he looks and goes “wow, it really is a beautiful church” with complete sincerity-and then a second later drops the act and takes a big bite of his candy bar saying “so, you see it”, conveying by his tone “I don’t care, stupid girl.”  Kajol makes a face, then grabs his jacket and pulls him after her out of frame.

The dialogue here sounds rude and crude written out, but the meaning is less in what they are saying than in what they are asking.  Shahrukh asks her if she is hungry and, even though it is followed by a big bite of his candy bar, the joke is that he is undercutting her assumption.  And that her assumption is that, yes, he will feed her.

Kajol asks him to go with her to the church, and the assumption there is not only that he will follow her anywhere, but that she will not go anywhere without his permission/escort.  Okay, she has to enforce that rule by physically dragging him along, but the assumption is still there.  It reminded me of one of my favorite parts of Parineeta (the recent Saif and Vidya version), a movie which is all about the rights and privileges and assumptions of male and female commitments.

Vidya wants to go out to a nightclub, Saif hears about her going and tells her he doesn’t want her to go.  He is mad all night, thinking she has gone.  Finally, the next day, their mutual friend forces them to make up when she explains that she didn’t go, because Saif didn’t want her to.  They are both making an unspoken assumption of rights over the other.  Saif, that if he withholds approval, she will turn down experiences, and Vidya, that Saif would know she would never do anything without his approval.  I don’t necessarily like the message that a guy can tell her not to go to a nightclub!  But I love the way it unpacks the unspoken assumptions people make of each other and their relationships, and how two chaste characters like Saif and Vidya can be essentially married to each other, without ever touching in more than a friendly manner or exchanging a single line of romantic dialogue.  And the same thing is happening here.  Nothing has been said or promised, but Kajol will not go anywhere without his permission/escort, and Shahrukh will assume the responsibility for all her interactions with the outside world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvWmbbQ11mM

(Also, in the middle of all this, we get my all time favorite Rekha performance)

Speaking of marriage, here we are in a church!  And they are interacting in a very married kind of way.  The phrase “bickering like an old married couple” gets bandied about a lot, and this scene is exactly what it means.  When they enter, Shahrukh immediately starts hoping around, all hyper like he gets.  He tries out the echoes, he stomps on the floor, he hits the pews.  Kajol just turns and gives him one look, and he calms down immediately and says “sorry.”  It’s the exact same behavior as in their very first meeting, Shahrukh being hyper and bored, and Kajol glaring at him.  But this time, she doesn’t give him the death glare of “you are the worst person in the world just for existing!”, just a sort of quiet “please don’t do that, because it bothers me” glare.  And he says “sorry” not because he was doing anything intrinsically wrong, but because he knows her well enough to know it would bother her, and he did it anyway.

The camera is moving in a really interesting way this whole time.  It starts out behind them, following them up the aisle.  At the front of the church, suddenly it turns to be at a slight angle, almost directly in front, but still angled slightly so you can see Shahrukh to one side.  Kajol is still and quiet, staring up at the alter.  Shahrukh is standing over to the side.  He briefly pretends to share her enthusiasm, then changes to a matter of fact voice and reminds her that they can’t miss the bus, and she acknowledges that she remembers.  Again, old married couple!  He may irritate her by making fun of her, she may irritate him by being so enthusiastic, but ultimately he will still make sure they both make the bus, and she will obey him and acknowledge his position in their relationship.

Oh boy, this sounds soooooooo old-school when I write it out like that!  Again, I just mean in terms of Kajol’s inability to deal with the world due to how her father and social structures have crippled her abilities.  I have no doubt, after 20 years of marriage in the open and free atmosphere of the Malhotra household, this same character will be perfectly capable of figuring out a bus schedule and buying her own tickets and directing the whole family on where to go and what to do on every family vacation.  Heck, we see that change in K3G!  She goes from being thrown by his very presence at the neighborhood fair, to confidently ordering him to return home early for the Karva Chauth ceremony she has helped organize.  But at this moment in time, the Kajol we see here is a scared 18 year old who has never been away from home before, and very much needs someone with her to protect and direct.

Speaking off, there’s a really interesting shot that happens next.  I remembered that we get a close up of Kajol being all religious and praying, but I forgot that we are seeing her through Shahrukh’s eyes.  The camera focuses slightly, moving in on him so you see him fooling with the Bible and playing with the bell next to it.  Then he turns to get Kajol’s attention, to show her the bells.  That alone is interesting, it’s the same dynamic they’ve had for ages where he is just desperate for her attention, and nothing seems worth it if she isn’t watching him.

When he turns, the camera briefly shows us Kajol kneeling and praying, so we know what he is seeing in general.  But then it goes back to Shahrukh, as he sets the bells down and his face changes, and the camera zooms in closer and closer on his face.  It’s a standard trick, you zoom in on someone’s face like that, straight on at their eyes, it means you (the audience) are being pulled into their head.  It’s the same trick used at the end of Maine Pyar Kiya to signify that we are entering the brain of the bird, in order to understand his homicidal motivations (I love that movie SO MUCH.  Maine Pyar Kiya bird>Hum Aapke Hain Koun dog).

And only then do we zoom in on Kajol.  More than that, we zoom in from the side, the angle Shahrukh would see her.  It’s a beautiful shot of Kajol, but the point isn’t that Kajol looks beautiful, the point is that Kajol is beautiful in Shahrukh’s eyes.  And it is underlined by us immediately coming back to Shahrukh’s face, as he sighs and settles down on his arm to study her further, and then a second, even more beautiful shot of her.

We go back and forth like this a couple of times.  Gorgeous shots of Kajol praying intercut with Shahrukh watching her.  The first time, it is just to show how he sees her, how beautiful she appears to him.  But it keeps going, back and forth and back and forth, and it starts to have a slightly different meaning.  Especially since they are in a church.

It turns into this, but with the genders reversed:

 

Remember how I talked about Kajol having all the spiritual power while Shahrukh has the physical?  That’s what this scene is showing.  He can tell her when to leave, can make a lot of noise, can ring the bells in the church, but she has a direct line to God.  And while she can pray and worship God, Shahrukh can only worship her.

 

You wanna know something weird?  The streaming version I am watching now doesn’t have the scene right after this when Shahrukh prays for her.  I’m not imagining things, right?  That does actually happen in the movie?  And not just in an odd “deleted scenes” version, but in the standard DVD/theatrical release version?  Anyway, I’m going to have to track it down somewhere before I can move on, so I guess I am done for the day now!