Well, I still think the ending doesn’t work, but otherwise this is a really interesting film. Especially in the less obvious themes. Which, again, failed in the ending. Sigh.
This was the first of the “Shahrukh is producing something challenging and weird and no one gets it” movies. At least this one got some critical acclaim along with cult popularity, to help soften the blow of the bad box office. But really, was it ever going to get good box office? Shahrukh has a mustache and a big turban. The whole thing takes place in the past but it’s not a historical. It takes place in the context of a family home, but it’s not a family movie either. It’s just weird.
I appreciate the full commitment to that oddness. There is never a moment of the film that feels out of period, overly modern. Or a moment that feels out of character with the fable like story, a moment that is too literal or too magical. You can lose yourself in the world of this film without even realizing you are losing yourself because it doesn’t feel like a fake world. It’s just logical, reasonable and appropriate to the story.
The performances are a large part of this. Every actor has to tread the line of being sincere and simple in their performance, while also not breaking the feel of the fable and becoming too natural. This is not a movie for actors to stutter and gasp through dialogue, or let their hair fall in their eyes, or their clothes wrinkle, or their gestures fly around. This is a movie to be straight and clear, while also sensitive and emotional. And they successfully achieve that.
Rani and Shahrukh lead the cast. It would be Rani’s movie, except that Shahrukh takes an extremely difficult double role, almost impossibly difficult, and his ability to walk that fine line between the two characters is what carries the whole movie. Rani is still the lead of the film, the character whose journey we follow, but it is Shahrukh’s two characters who have the greatest growth and change over the course of the film. Rani’s ability to give us a strong steady center, and Shahrukh’s acting feat make the whole film work, even though it really shouldn’t. Around them there is a larger cast that gives us a varying degree of sincerity in their performances, from the extreme mannerisms of Amitabh to the simple sadness of Juhi. Each character represents a simple character type, a basic role in the world of the film, and a position in this little fable we are seeing.
This is a lovely film but, in many ways, it feels like it belongs more as one of those fairy tales I used to love when I was a little girl. I can picture an illustration labeled “Bride”, another one labeled “husband”, “ghost”, “Sister-in-law”, “Mother”, “Father”, “Uncle”, “Servant”. And then the simple words of the story along with pictures, before ending with the perfect simple moral of the story.
The biggest problem with this film is that it is the kind of simple story that requires a moral. And yet, the moral is denied to the audience. The film walks us right up to it and then turns away. It’s an awkward moment of unfaithfulness to the tone of the rest of the film. If this is a simple straightforward magical story, than it should have a simple straightforward magical ending. There is a place for art that leaves holes, that makes the audience make up their own mind. But that place is not at the end of a movie that otherwise has been completely obvious and clear.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
Rani is a bride, married to the son of a wealthy trading family who lives a day’s journey from her family home. She is happy and excited about her marriage, but on her wedding night her husband Shahrukh spurns her in favor of paperwork and tells her he is living the very next day to spend 5 years in the city protecting his father’s trading concerns. On the journey to the house, a spirit saw her and fell in love with her beauty. When he sees her husband leaving, the spirit decides to take on the guise of her husband so he can sleep with her. Only he is so in love that he tells her the truth, and she decides to stay with him anyway. For 2 years they are happy, and then the real husband returns.
Here is where the moral should come in to play. It’s a simple moral. We see the spirit grow over the course of 2 years, he arrives at first merely because he is obsessed with the bride. But he is welcomed into the house and the family and comes to learn the magic of the human experience and being part of a larger family. He goes from being a spirit to being a human. Meanwhile the husband is cut off from the human experience, alone and isolated from his family. With distance and absence, he becomes more spiritual and finds the heart inside of himself. In the end, the two men combine. The spirit provides the fearless heart that loves, and the human provides the man who cares for the whole world and not just the heart inside himself. But the problem is, no moral!!!! The film ends with the spirit possessing the body of the husband. It comes right up to where it needs to go, but stops just short of giving the audience the nice tidy speech we need, the moment when Shahrukh (or the narrator) says “Your husband and I are now combined into one man, who loves you and is entirely human”. Or something like that.
What I noticed on this watch is how both of Shahrukh’s performances are leading to this ending. The husband’s story is a bit showier and more obvious. He sits alone for 2 years, and obsesses over the few minutes he had with his wife. He agonizes because he is receiving no letters from his family. And finally it is too much for him, his heart overcomes his common sense, he disobeys his father and walks away from money in order to return home and see his wife. He goes from a soulless dutiful machine playing out the role of “husband” and “son” without really feeling them, to someone whose heart wakes up. But the ghost has a less obvious and still fascinating journey.
Part of my problem with this film was that I felt like the ghost wasn’t drawn clearly enough, what was his plan? What did he want? But on this watch I saw it differently, he didn’t have a plan and he didn’t want anything. He was going into this with no rules and no control as much as anyone else. He is a spirit, after all. He is not used to thinking beyond the moment, and certainly not used to thinking about the greater good and how his actions might affect other people. So he turns himself into a man in order to see a beautiful woman again. He is confronted by the man’s father (Anupam Kher) and quickly invents a story on the spot. He is smart, and he is powerful, he can get out of anything on the spot. But what he is not used to is thinking about consequences. “Dheere Jalna” is about him realizing that life is limited, time is limited, and he must consider how he uses it. Thus, when he has a chance to fulfill his impulse of the moment and be with the bride, he stops and instead tells her the truth. He wants more time, honest time, and just then in that moment his plan changes.
We see just brief parts of their life together after that. But those brief moments show how the spirit becomes less and less a spirit and more and more human. His wife teaches him to think about his family, about what people will think, about the greater happiness of the community. He tries to trap her in the bedroom, but lets her go when his mother calls for her. He entertains his wife by making bangles for her, but also entertains the other women of the house. He helps the family win a camel race, not for his own amusement, or to please his wife, but because he cares about the family as a whole and understands that winning this race might help the lost son of the house Suniel Shetty return home. And finally, he comes to care about the whole community of people, and uses his cleverness to trick his father Anupam Kher into building a new well.
It’s not just the new well, it is that he chooses to trick Anupam into it. He doesn’t want to build it by magic, he wants to help like a human helps, with hard labor. And he understands the greater importance of Anupam being the one to help the community, that it will be good for Anupam, good for the community, even good for the family to honor Anupam for something real. From a spirit who impulsively started a charade with the hope of perhaps one night of sex and no consideration for who he hurt, he has become fully a man of men, caring for everyone and wanting them all to be happy. Culminating in wanting a child, a baby to carry on this charade into another generation.
Both these journeys are fascinating. And yet, we don’t get a conclusion for them, the ghost deciding to live half human and powerless from now on and the man choosing to welcome the ghost into himself because he finally understands love. We instead get an ending only for Rani.
Rani’s character and performance are wonderful, but the film doesn’t work if they are the point of the story. She starts out as a cheerful bride, leaving her home but happy about where she is going, eager to get to know her new husband, and her new family. But when her husband announces he is leaving without consummating the marriage, she is heart broken. Her identity, her purpose in life is gone. When Shahrukh returns as the spirit, she is thrown into an identity crisis. What defines her as a woman? Being married in front of society, or being with a man who loves her? She chooses the second choice, accepting a man who is there and loves her rather than the cold comfort of a meaningless role. But she finds herself trapped in uncharted territory. In order to continue as she wants to go on, she has to teach her spirit “husband” how to act like a real human. They build a marriage within a marriage, a secret world inside of the public bounds. But there is no future for it, as time passes we see Rani go from a young happy bride to an increasingly troubled woman, fearing that she has no control over her life, the good things in it can be taken away without notice. Until we reach the end, when she takes control for once, and chooses to tell her husband the truth, that she slept with the spirit willingly, knowing what he was. She is no longer interested in playing the “bride” and the “wife”, she wants to continue being herself, her individual person. And she is rewarded by learning she has not lost her lover after all, he has magically returned to her.
And that’s great, if this was a film about woman’s desire. About how a bride who wants a marriage inspires a spirit to fall in love and come to her after her husband leaves her. And how her strength and honesty brings that spirit back to life within her husband’s body. But that isn’t this film.
This is a story of three people. Rani, the bride, who desires a husband who loves her and the security and safety of a place in the world. The husband, who tries to follow the rules and do the “right” thing but hurts himself in the process without realizing it. And the spirit, who doesn’t believe in rules or places or anything but discovers that a sustaining love needs to be protected. And the ending doesn’t give us an answer for two out of those three, leaves us feeling like we were wrong to care for them, like the film played a trick on us somehow, like somehow this story wasn’t really real after all.
dontcallitbollywood 
Fabulous review. The ending did seem hollow, though I could never figure out why, so thank you for putting it into words. Paheli was the third or forth Hindi film I saw, I didn’t know who SRK was, and for a time after watching the film I thought of him as that unattractive short man who managed to became a worldwide phenomenon. I don’t think mustaches suit him.
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I don’t think mustaches suit him either! Make his nose look bigger and his chin look weaker. Just all around no good.
Glad I’m not the only one who felt the ending was unsatisfying in a way that weakened the rest of the film.
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I haven’t seen it in a long time and am looking forward to rewatching it to see if I have changed my mind. But for now, I love ending to this movie! To me, the ending is the best part because it is such a fantastic, feminist, twist on the original Rajasthani folktale. The original story ends with the ghost being trapped, and the woman having to go back to husband she doesn’t love and dull life of duties and responsibility. If you feel like seeing this depressing version, you can see Duvidha by Mani Kaul. I love this ending, because at the end it’s all about Rani’s choice. She tells the Real SRK(R-SRK) that she willingly, with consent, chose to love Ghost SRK(G-SRK). She isn’t sure if she could ever love R-SRK. And then Ghost SRK reveals himself and she is happy! She had no choice in marrying R-SRK, and she was even fine with it, even happy, because she has not been in love. But then she chose G-SRK and she gets to be with her choice.
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Oh oh! a thing you just made me realize! The choice Rani makes to tell R-SRK that she knew G-SRK was a gost and stayed with him, is the same choice G-SRK made to tell her the truth and give her a choice. And in both cases, the reward and true love.
On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 3:56 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Exactly! I love that they both are truthful when it matters, and make a conscious choice, and are rewarded with true love.
I may be in the minority, but I think this movie is so radically refreshing. It displays consent, choice, falling in love after marriage to a man who isn’t the person you were married off to, sexual desire, and getting pregnant out of wedlock and choosing to keep the child. And that’s just all Rani and SRK.
There is so much other good stuff in this movie! Juhi saying that she will not beg god for her husband to return because he coonsciously chose to abandon her. Juhi providing warmth, and support, and love to Rani and refusing to be bitter and angry. The MIL telling Rani that she didn’t expect Rani to recognize G-SRK given that his own parents couldn’t tell the difference.
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Wouldn’t it be interesting to see a modern non-magical version of this story? Like, a couple is married and then goes off to live in the city/overseas together. The husband leaves for work and the wife is lonely, and the neighbor man confesses his love. They tell the neighborhood that they are husband and wife and live like husband and wife and are happy. And then the real husband returns, with his family.
On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 8:44 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I guess I don’t see what you don’t see in the ending. I think the straight reading of the ending is a pretty amoral one, in the way that old fairy tales often are. Hubby ends up in the water skin for all eternity. Yes, he regretted his actions, yes, he tried to make amends for deserting his wife, but it was too little too late, or he wasn’t worthy, or it just wasn’t his fate. Sometimes the universe says no. I prefer the interpretation that you offer, that somehow hubby and the ghost combine. But, I do think this is a women’s movie–both Juhi and Rani are badly hurt, but keep living and loving, and have happy endings, as you sometimes do in fairy tales.
100% agreement that a mouche without a beard does NOT suit Shah Rukh. And, those giant turbans don’t suit any one. 🙂
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Poor hubby! I thought at least he was supposed to be still in his own body, just sharing it with SRK (even if they hadn’t merged, at least he was there). It hadn’t occurred to me that SRK shoved him off into the water skin.
Hmm. I’ll have to think about that kind of morality, the old school “and then the witch danced herself to death” kind of hardcore endings. If we look at it as a kind of inverted Beauty and the Beast ending, than the moral would be “don’t neglect your wife or you will end up trapped in a waterskin”, right?
On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 4:05 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Exactly.
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In my mind, it is a movie about free will and about honest love…and that is a lot of moral.
I like your review especially the thoughts about the changes the ghost undergoes. The husband doesn’t change. I may be his desire to get back to her wife and family but when he comes home he barely addresses himself to his wife…it is, basically, his father he wants to convince…he still first of all is his father’s son, than his mother’s son and then a husband. So, it is a must that the ghost gives up on an own body and an own voice, but installs his love, caring and passion (the lived one and the future one) in the husband’s body…the part in the shephard’s satchel isn’t important for him anymore.
It may not be a feminist movie in the proper sense of the word but it is a movie that hands over the important decisions to the woman, to the one woman, to only one woman because she is the only one who meets quasi unconditional love. And it isn’t a man who gives her that gift of choice, it is the personification of a loving man who submits himself to the decision of the woman.
There are some very important lines which define the movie I never forgot (at least the sense):
Rani is more puzzled and overwhelmed that – for the first time in her life – she is asked to act according to her free will than that a ghost wants to make love with her.
ShahRukh says that he (the ghost) is the yearning for love every woman has in her heart, that he is love. Well, the actor ShahRukh has become just that, was it already at the time he made Paheli (baring the “every”)…and like a ghost he was/is like a family member in many, many families or resides in the heart of people.
The ghost decides to reveal his nature and breaks the promise he gave saying (thinking) that he has to do it to prove the sincerity of his love – it is his free will…and the nature of a free will is that you can’t lock it even though the decision may take away something.
For me, the ending is the only logical one according to the tale told.
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Hmm. Now you have me wanting to compare this film with Om Shanti Om and Billu and Dhanak, where he also plays the personification of love.
On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 6:03 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Contrary to procrastinatrix, I think that the hubby’s body is essential for the ending, the fullfilment of the love story and the solution of the riddle because both are needed for an ending that would satisfy not only the heroine but also the whole family: the human husband and the loving spirit…it’s like putting them in a symbolic riddle and then riddle them so what is essential to them merges, both keeping something and losing something.
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We never get a totally clear idea of the limitations/powers of the spirit body. That’s another thing I would have liked to see clarified. Like, did he give up all his powers when he inhabited her husband? Is he just going to be a regular mortal now?
On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 3:42 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yes, I think, he had to give up everything baring the spiritual part/the feelings, but I think, the body is acting along the feelings, so it doesn’t matter. He may still be able to snap the fingers, but his ghostpowers had gone into the water skin.
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That would feel more meaningful to me, and in line with his whole journey (as I see it) from instant gratification and no connections, to choosing to give up all his powers in order to commit to his human connections.
On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 7:56 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I liked that the ghost eventually stands by his promise to not give up the love although he had to give up everything else Rani was used to.
I imagine that there may be struggles between the husband character and the former ghost character in one person (we see at the end that both exist in one body) but as I felt that the husband nevertheless had a sensitive side and the ghost a community-responsible side (the two major things had been done…winning the race/giving back the husband to Juhi and the well on the own property), this may finally be a good solution.
I really liked the multiple meaning of ‘spirit’ and ‘riddle’. The ghost also called himself a spirit and Amitji said he would solve the riddle as he already suspects that one of them is a ghost. So, he quasi puts them together in a ‘riddle’ (sieve). The first test lets the ghost know that Amitji is very clever and would now suspect that he is a ghost because the husband fell through although trying to prove himself. The 2nd test (catching the shephard’s sheep) makes the ghost say, that Amitji should do tests which a trader can do realising that his ghostpowers are challanged. Actually, the husband almost fails again confirming to the shephard that his thought was right. So, for the third test he puts them again into the same ‘riddle’ (suspecting that the ghost has to have a serious reason to not wanting to show his power), this time to get rid of the ghost. What triggered ShahRukh’s decision to give in to the test, was the word “lover” and the fact that Amitji had named the husband twice as the real one. But what could he probably do to keep as much of the promise given to Rani (‘never doing anything that would remind Rani that he isn’t a human being’). Like he says, it is ‘the test of his love’. So he breaks the oath by doing ghost stuff becoming a human being in turn for never being again able to use any ghostpower.
Isn’t this a glorious ending? Giving up something so powerful for love and at the same time keeping his power of love alive in the regular human being (who may just get aware that he changes in his behaviour).
You see, I love this movie 🙂
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I agree, it is a glorious ending! I just want it to be more explicit. It’s a film where we have had every other moment explicitly stated, the ghost declaring he is in love, the wife declaring she will not send him away, and so on and so forth. And yet somehow at the ending there was no explicit statement that the two men were together in the same body, that the ghost had sacrificed all his powers, and so on and so forth.
On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 9:19 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I like endings that are open to individual interpretation 🙂
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I hate open endings! I like endings that have a death, a marriage, and a baby. All clear and tidy. Like life isn’t.
On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 3:06 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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What a wonderful comment Claudia 🙂
I especially liked the part:
“ShahRukh says that he (the ghost) is the yearning for love every woman has in her heart, that he is love”
and I started thinking, and what if there wasn’t any ghost? Lachchi was so happy to marry and be with her husband that when he rejected her on their wedding night and then left, she created a ghost in her head, and imagined to be with him so she could keep living.
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Great idea although I think that then the ending should have involved Rani as a decision maker again.
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But, other people see the ghost, right? So it couldn’t be a total hallucination? Unless she is extremely extremely crazy and this whole thing is actually a fable about someone having a psychotic break?
On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 1:42 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Although it is a tempting idea, I think, nothing in the movie supports it.
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Yes, others also saw the ghost, so it’s clear the movie didn’t want to take the road of “it was everything in her head”, but I think it would be cool. The ghost and his love were so perfect, almost like created in woman’s imagination.
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That’s why I think it’s a tempting idea, at least for a movie where the kind of making supports this thought more clearly.
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What a great review and discussion. I do think I might have been a tad happier if it was more explicit that the ghost gave up his powers to live as a mortal with Rani. But it seems to be a logical step to imagine that it was implicit in the ending. Now, was the ghost in the bag but got out and inhabited the husband’s body? Is the husband’s spirit in the bag? Are they combined in some way, with the best parts of both from their individual journeys merged as M suggests? Does the husband’s spirit still exist on a form that would communicate with Rani? That’s what left me hanging…but I thoroughly enjoyed the fable, the performances and even the ending knowing that the two lovers were reunited.
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I think, a ghost is able to split if there is another body to inhabitate and if he is willing to give up his ghostly power which is needed to transport the body and doing magical stuff. As everybody was focussed on the waterbag nobody noticed anything other.
ShahRukh tells Rani exactly that after she confesses to her husband that it was h e r free will to be with the ghost like if it were her husband. Because of h i s free will he could enter the waterbag and the husband’s body.
Btw, I found it remarkable how the husband’s mimic relaxed the moment Rani did her confession showing me that – for love – he would have been willing also to accept to keep hiding (or, maybe to slowly, slowly influence the husband’s feelings and view on his wife’s needs).
For me, Paheli is like an ode to love…this unvisible something that inhabits people in so various forms and can have a power beyond everything physical.
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I don’t like the current ending, but I think I would have really been furious if she was stuck with the real husband.
On Sun, Oct 13, 2019 at 1:10 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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