Rab ne bana di jodi, 2008
Directed and written by: Aditya Chopra
Produced by: Yash Raj Films
Starring: Shahrukh Khan, Anushka Sharma, Vinay Pathak
Notable Songs: Dance pe Chance, Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte, Haule Haule
It's Kinda Like: Any of those movies where the dork gets a cool makeover, plus any of those movies where the girl is involved with two people who happen to be the same guy.
(I missed last week what with a crazy schedule, so you get two this week. Booyah!)
(That is, assuming anyone reads this besides my mom. Hi mom!)
A modern Bollywood with, as the critics say, a touch of the old: comedy plus melodrama equals that guilty-pleasure frisson of awesomeness. And bonus: you get to see Shahrukh Khan dressed up like a Total Dork AND a Super Hot Douchebag in the same movie!
Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi's entire plot is set off by an event that could only take place (at all realistically, anyway) in a place where arranged marriages are still culturally acceptable. (It happens in the first five minutes of the movie, so I can tell you about it.) Surinder (Shahrukh Khan) is the all-time favorite student of an old professor, who invites Suri to his daughter's wedding. Seeing her dancing and shouting and making last-minute wedding preparations, Suri falls instantly and silently in love with her.
The groom's family, however, is killed on the way to the wedding! The news literally gives Taani's father a heart attack, and on his deathbed he suggests that Surinder, his solid-citizen favorite student, marry his daughter instead, who would otherwise be left bereft and destroyed.
And thus the opening shots of the film, silent, poignant, and awwww-inspiring. SRK's awkward, well-meaning physicality is understatedly adorable and heartrending. Meanwhile, the poor bride, decked out in her finery, wearily and warily eyes the dingy streets of Amritsar and her unceremonious new home.
I found this movie, in concept and execution, interesting because it focuses on a character we don't get to see much: the average middle-class tech worker. Shahrukh Khan, with a simply atrocious haircut and moustache, plays Surinder "Suri" Sahni, a tech support employee for Punjab Power: "Lighting up your life!" He's shy, quiet, polite, self-effacing, not exactly a snappy dresser, and pretty much completely unattractive (O the bright white sneakers with highwater khakis! O the too-large tucked-in button-down shirt with pens in the pocket! SO delightful!). He resembles nothing so much as someone's embarrassing unfashionable dad, rather than the superhot cool dude he usually plays.
And, he allows us a glimpse into at least a vision of middle-class India. Granted, he has a probably-gay hairdresser for a best friend (how did that happen, exactly?), but his office mates, prairiedogging over the cube walls, are fantastically normal, boring office mates (why is that one guy in a neck brace? I LOVE that touch.). He rides a tiny scooter to his boring job, and showers outside under a tap. Whether or not it's true to life, I cannot say, not having been to India, but the humdrum unglamorous picture is intriguing nonetheless.
Another thing that I enjoyed about this movie, following from the previous point, is the way Suri's songs are staged, woven through the everyday world like a train of thought surfacing and then ducking back into the unconscious. Colorful dancers appear, invisible to everyone but him. His personal dance moves, IMDB tells me, were mostly improvised, which results in a lovely sense of personal spontaneous joy echoed by the burst of color invisible to an ignorant public.
Check out the video for Haule Haule, and you'll see what I mean:
And then, of course, there's his Sassy Alter Ego. It arises in a slightly different way than these things usually do in this type of film. He's ALREADY married to her, so he doesn't have to "win" her in order to have her. But, he's so shy and lovestruck he can't really talk to her -- so when she comes out of her shell enough to request money for a Bollywood dance class, he asks his pal Bobby to help him create an alter ego -- just so he can watch her dance and be happy. Of COURSE, things get out of control, and chance -- or divine intervention -- make them dance partners.
"Rab ne bana di jodi" loosely translates as "A match made in heaven," or "A couple chosen by god." There's an interesting interplay between love as dictated by the gods, and love as portrayed in Bollywood films -- self-referential, eh? One of Taani's few joys is going to see films with her husband, which is where the whole dressing-up idea springs from. There's the dance class, which is specifically a Bollywood class. There's Shahrukh Khan himself, as "Raj Kapoor," the loud, obnoxious, flirtatious dance partner he names remembering a character in a film they saw together (which has a HIGH-larious fight scene, by the way, in which the hero fights off the gang WITH his girlfriend -- and I don't mean side by side, he's literally WIELDING her). And how many filmi heroes have there been named Raj or Kapoor or both? Exactly. Not to mention Raj Kapoor himself, a famous actor and director.
Even Raj's catch phrase, "Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke, Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte" is a melange of three movie titles, all starring famous Khans, one of them Shahrukh himself. And the song that bears that name is a tour through the history of Bollywood film romance (see 2007's Om Shanti Om for another great example of that kind of song). The number also features a bunch of star Bollywood women, here for their item number.
Here's the video of the song, which begins with early Bollywood and a tribute to the REAL Raj Kapoor, India's Charlie Chaplin. Literally. He's essentially Charlie Chaplin, people. Only his hat is shaped differently. (how I love the culture of borrowing! ;o)
The title/refrain of that song essentially says: "We take different forms, and we're travelling down the road of love; down the road we'll meet again." Indicating, you know, that it's inevitable they'll end up happy in one lifetime or other. But does it mean because of god, or because of the movies? After all, it's Taani's daydream in which the whole song sequence takes place; is her subconscious trying to show her that Raj is a trickster who takes many forms and therefore . . . . . . ?
Of course she has to choose between them at SOME point, though I found that events shook out slightly less predictably than they could have. For instance: who would guess this movie would feature sumo wrestling? Or a motorcycle chase? But it does. There's a whoole lot more movie than featured here, folks. And like I find in most Bollywood, sometimes the silliest characters show more dignity and depth than you would expect, even the boorish Raj. Neither of the two men behaves perfectly well OR perfectly badly, leaving Taani with a truly tough choice. Good thing they're both the same guy, right?
I love the scene right before intermission where a drunken Raj is addressing his own alter ego. Monologues in Bollywood = something most Western movies don't have time for (or at least no time for one per emotional moment), but that really plumb the depths of characters in unexpected ways. Sometimes things can be cheesy AND profound, people! Embrace the cheese. Love the cheese.
Verdict: Fascinating culturally, for all the everyday stuff as well as the religious stuff (the famous Golden Temple of Amritsar is so pretty!). And a fun mix of film styles: Symbolic Indie Film, Rollicking Comedy, and a healthy portion of Romantic Melodrama all rolled into one.
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