This isn’t yet another piece about Ae Dil Hai Mushkil ( because God knows we don’t need one more). This is an alarmist piece on how Hindi cinema is in imminent danger of never being able to make an iconic love story ever again (actually right now, I would even settle for a decent rom com).
Can you remember the last love story in the last five years that made you a little giddy or made you smile all silly? I can’t and I am seriously perturbed (I would have said ‘worried but ‘perturbed’ adds more nuance so there)
Let us start with the basics. Why do good love stories work? Because they give you two characters who make you invest in their lives and their feelings. At end of the tale, their union gives you a great deal of happiness or their separation/death gives you that slightly hollow feeling in the pit of your tummy.
For THAT level of emotional investment, the story then as my mum would say needs to have Dum ( not to be mistaken with the Vivek Oberoi – Dia Mirza starrer of the same name from a pre-historic era). And it is precisely this Dum which has gone out of our storytelling.
Let me labour this point in a point by point format (calling it a listicle is very 2014), we will call it five or more reasons why we should unmake / unsee DDLJ or KKHH. ( if you need those acronyms to be spelled out, you should stop reading this piece right about now).
It isn’t just about these two films to be honest, but click baits are meant to be intrinsically misleading. Here are all the reasons why love ain’t what it used to be and is a rather blah affair in our current films:
1. Conflict Or the Lack of Conflict
Everybody in Hindi films is now rich. So no socio -economic factors come between the lovers. The only notable mention of stark crippling poverty in recent times was in ADHM where Ranbir and Anushka had to share a room in Paris because of budgetary reasons. After all, money can be a crunch when your daily commute is a private jet.
2. Liberal Parenting
Lax parents no longer want to control who their children should marry. Apart from gallantly picking up the tab for their aimless wards, the parents have in fact more or less disappeared from the scene. Not even returning to the action after said aimless ward is struck down by fatal cancer. Hands off and how!
3. The Redundancy of Monish Bahl
Boys and girls can’t be friends is now replaced by Junoon rejected Sukoon’s friendship request. It doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. Friend zoning can never be the stuff of high romance. Let’s stop pretending
4. Internal Conflict
Reason number 1. In the absence of external conflict, the conflict has become internal. However, the angst wears thin, is repetitive and has given us a man -child of a hero who just refuses to grow up. The heart cannot beat faster – when your romantic hero has the mental age of a particularly tantrummy toddler. Kuch Kuch Nahin Hota.
5. Misunderstanding
You remember that? Two daft lovers who didn’t communicate and exasperated the hell out of you. But it was delicious exasperation – now they tell you everything. They don’t show you how they feel – they describe it in boring self centred verbosity.
6. Backstory Please?
Romantic films and novels have a template – and one thing is non negotiable. You have to show me the process of falling in love. Give me the back story, the moments – falling in love never goes out of fashion. There is a reason why Jane Austen is still read. Or Pakistani serials are this popular. Or why Sairat is a monster hit. Or go down South and watch this lovely Malayalam film called Premam. They don’t compromise on the process even if they are going out to an audience which right swipes its mating choices. Don’t shortchange the love.
7. Unsee DDLJ and KKHH
We have to forget we made DDLJ and KKHH. Unsee them. Every new moment you create cannot become a self conscious, affectionate parody of an older moment. It doesn’t reinvent anything – it just reinforces why we miss those films even two decades down the line.
To sum it up, If you won’t forget the 90s’ romance, you will never make a romance for 2016.
( Naomi Datta is @nowme_datta and waits in despair for a true blue, toe curling romance)
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