ARE YOU HAVING A SHIT DAY?
Brighten up an utterly shitty day. Hello friends!
Are you having as SHIT a day as I am, yet, are you nonetheless in a GOOD MOOD? Do you wish to look as happy as me? If so, send $1 to "Happy Dude", etc etc.
No, even better, just click on the links below to make your day more enjoyable. The links lead to clips of song sequences from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, a film which I recommended to everyone a month or so ago. It has played for over 500 weeks in Mumbai (as of May 2005), and is the longest running (ongoing) release in the history of Indian cinema. And why has it run so long and been so successful, you ask? Because, simply, it rules. I tend to dislike Bollywood films because they stretch my patience to the limit with their pseudo-screwball capering, too-intense or too-washed-out colours, and unfathomable emotionalism. In these respects, I generally dislike Bollywood films for the same reasons that I dislike anime, with the big difference being that I hate anime with the nuclear passion of a thousand suns and am indifferent to Bollywood.
Any way, the point is that I loved DDLJ, which was genuinely funny as well as typically absurd, beautifully shot, had engaging characters, and compelled my investment like whoah. Maybe it was because I watched it in a lecture theatre crowded with undergrads who couldn't help but surrender their cynical and prematurely world-weary scowls to the film's infectious charm (they clapped, cheered, and booed at all the appropriate moments), and maybe it's because the film's incredible length (3.5 hours) demanded my investment by virtue of duration alone. Either way, who cares?
The story is typical Bollywood fare, although it's designed specifically to assuage the national guilt of ex-pat, 'globalized' Hindustanis by reminding them that home and traditions reside in the heart, blah blah blah. It concerns the unbelievably slowly-developing relationship between two Punjabi second-generation British Asians living in London: Raj (a slacker delinquent who does nothing but goof off in the most benign and socially-responsible ways imaginable) and Simran (the devoted daughter of a homesick traditionalist). The two meet on summer trip across Europe and hate one another for, like, two hours, whereupon they return to London and realize that they love one another. Simran's father moves the family back to India so she can marry her intended husband, but of course Raj shows up and slowly (ever so slowly) foils the plot. All ends more or less happily, with a bloodied Raj hauling Simran onto a train we assume will eventually get them back to London - kind of like a Bollywood version of The Graduate.
By shooting in Switzerland (which basically stands-in for the entirety of Europe) and in London's most iconic locales as much as he shoots in Haryana, director Chopra pretty much ensures against alienating any of his spectators. On the one hand, this is part of the film's reifying agenda to make everyone comfortable (Raj and Simran offer up prayers in a Catholic church and that's considered okay, etc etc), but all the location changes are also exhilarating: they ease the butt-pain of the film's length by dividing it neatly into national and international motifs.
Maybe the music needs the context of the movie in order to acquire its full presence of total fucking awesomeness, so here are the songs as they appear in the films:
- In "Mere Khwabon Mein" (from the beginning of the film), Simran fantasizes about her ideal man while shots of Raj doing sublimely stupid things (outrunning a plane, winning a go-cart race) play over the song. It ends with Simran jumping around spastically in the rain in the family's prim little English garden while her mother brings in the laundry. Incidentally, the chick who plays Simran is probably the most beautiful woman in the history of the universe, ever. Seriously, are you that pretty? Have you ever dated anyone that pretty? Yeah, didn't think so.
- In "Ruk Ja O Dil Deewane", Raj tries to woo an unimpressed Simran by playing the piano at a club in Paris, and then an entire dance number breaks out. I particularly like how, in the middle of the song, the increasingly unbearable American rockabilly guitar is revivified by the classically Eastern off-tempo clapping beat. Oh, and he drops her at the end and that's funny.
- In "Ho Gaya Hai Tujhko", Simran wanders around London after returning from Europe and imagines Raj everywhere. For some unfathomable reason which embraces rather than ignores its unmitigated cheeziness, I think this is an extraordinary sequence.
- JJJJS