Review: Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna
(Since the published version appeared today with major cuts, here’s the writer’s cut)
Slow Poison
Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukerji, Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Amitabh Bachchan
Director: Karan Johar
Storyline: Dev and Maya fall in love. But wait, they are married. Not to each other.
Bottomline: Karan tries to sugarcoat a bitter-pill, manufactures slow poison.
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.
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.
Anna: “Don’t do this.” 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 Na 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 trappings of the Karan Johar candy-floss fantasy genre give little room for real characters and realistic situations.
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 trademarked by the Johars and Chopras makes it all the more difficult to digest.. <!– D(["mb"," \nSample: Rhea tells Maya: "Dev ko vaapas karo" (when she\'s just referring to a\nphotograph of Dev that Maya is taking with her). \nPreity Zinta as Rhea and Abhishek Bachchan as Rishi are backed by well-etched\nout roles, come out of the film with their heads held high. While Preity\nbreathes life even into what could have been a tough stereotype, Abhishek\nBachchan in the best-written role in the film steals every frame, along with\nhis player-father Sam (Amitabh Bachchan) introduced into the film purely for\ncomic relief and the mandatory patriarchal advice. \n\n\n
Shah Rukh Khan looks appropriately tired mouthing similar\nlines to similar characters in similar movies. But this time, his tired,\ncynical look is probably intentional as the King Khan plays Dev, a bad loser in\nlove with a self-centred school-teacher Maya (Rani Mukerji) \n\n\n
\n\n\n
American society is known to be more progressive and yet the\nHollywood take on the same subject chose to take a more punitive angle on\ninfidelity. \n\n\n
The director ends up sanctioning infidelity just because\nShah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee cannot be shown as the villains of the piece.",1] ); //–>Sample: Rhea tells Maya: “Dev ko vaapas karo” (when she’s just referring to a photograph of Dev that Maya is taking with her). 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 into the film purely for comic relief and the mandatory patriarchal advice.
Larry: “Just answer the question! Is he good?”
Anna: “Yes.”
Larry: “Better than me?”
\nThe tagline for Closer goes: If you believe in love at first sight, you never\nstop looking.
\nCloser is a microscopic examination of the complexity of relationships and infidelity,\nbut with a righteous sense of morality. It underscores the importance of\ncommitment and addresses that in the conversation when Dan confesses to Alice.
\nDan: "I fell in love with her, Alice."
\nAlive: "Oh, as if you had no choice? There\'s a moment, there\'s always a moment,\n\'I can do this, I can give into this, or I can resist it\', and I don\'t know\nwhen your moment was, but I yet there was one."
\nIn KANK, though the lines paint them as selfishly human, the visuals and the\nscore project them as poor innocent people who had no choice but to fall in\nlove. The cinematic grammar including the star iconography associated with\nKaran Johar\'s brand of cinema ensure that this bitter-pill of a love story is\ndistastefully sugar-coated.