‘Vivah’ and ‘Deadline’

Two films, missed premises, and the Hollywood poison
 

Vivah

Sooraj Barjatya (SB) enjoys making wedding films. ‘Hum Aaap Ke Hain Kaun’ was termed as a marriage video. Many believe that the film pioneered the ‘wedding film genre’, films made around a wedding ceremony. ‘Monsoon Wedding’, and ‘ My Greek Fat Wedding’ came after that and they seemed inspired by ‘Hum Aap…’.
 

SB made his next film called ‘Hum Saath Saath Hain’. This was a multiple wedding film. The brand value and momentum generated after the phenomenal success of ‘Hum Aaap Ke Hain Kaun’ helped. The film survived box office blues somehow.  Next was ‘Main Hoon Prem Ki Deewani’, a bad remake of one of the old and beautiful Rajshri classics. The film bombed badly in spite of its formidable star line-up.

SB reverts to his familiar territory once again. This time he also names the film as ‘Vivah’. The much proclaimed premise of the film is very simple. It is about ‘moments in a couple’s journey from engagement to marriage’. This sounds like a premise for a ‘Pre-wedding Video’ and SB intended to make exactly that as he admitted before the media time and again.
 

You can call it pure serendipity, and a blessing from God for the good past deeds of the Barjatyas, SB’s ‘moments’ also contains the germs of a classical premise.  The ‘Pre-wedding Video’ is, in a way, also the story of an orphan girl who puts her all on line to save her cousin from near death and wins the heart of her heartless aunt and the cinema audience. Thanks to this accident, Vivah will not be a box office dud now.
 

SB needs to understand that ‘Hum Aap Ke...’ did not succeed because of all those ‘samdhi-samdhan chuhalbaazi’  and ‘shaadi ka moments’. It had a strong premise in the love story of Salman and Madhuri, taken straight from ‘Nadia Ke Paar’. If Vivah has not turned out to be as good a film, it is because SB treats the better and more effective premise cursorily to devote his energies in constructing the much touted ‘engagement to marriage’ theme. He wastes his footage in useless, uninspiring, and fake ‘moments’ like the girl meeting the boy on the terrace with a glass of ‘jal’ and families visiting a hill station for a picnic, an obvious hangover of ‘Hum Saath Saath Hain’.
 

 

He should have developed Amrita’s relationship with her aunt. It had worked very well in the opening sequences of the film and had generated a lot of sympathy for Amrita’s character in the minds and the hearts of the audience. As the little girl grows, SB treats her like a typical film heroine. She looks better made up, and wears more expensive and stylish clothes than her cousin. She seems to be more pampered than neglected.

It is her cousin who looks neglected and marginalized in all those ugly costumes with a face painted black and multicolour ribbons tied to her hair. The real premise is brought back into play towards the fag end of the film. There is very little time left to develop it logically and convincingly now. SB somehow finishes the story using the most obvious ploys.

The film also scrapes through thanks to the audience’s propensity to create their own lovable, likable, and emotionally charged premises around half-baked narratives, under-developed characterisations, and badly-directed and performed scenes.

SB cannot take credit for that. He has not led the audiences to the serene and scenic lake of happiness; they have discovered it themselves, using their own imagination, intellect, heart, and soul.
 

Deadline

This film is the best illustration of the destructive effects of Hollywood poison that has been injected in our body cinematic.
 

Ninety-five percent of this film is a straight copy of a Hollywood film that was released some time this year. The remaining five percent, the climax, is genuine Indian stuff and that is what works the best. This may have happened because the action filled hi-tech climax of the original was a bit too expensive and complex to shoot and Indian ingenuity was coaxed to improvise and seek a cost-effective solution.
 

This is the issue Khullamkhulla has been raising all the time. Hollywood is stifling our creative growth. Let me use ‘Deadline’ as an example.
 

There are thousands of sick people who die every year because they cannot afford the high costs of Medicare. If you suffer from a rare heart disease or kidney failure and you come from middle and lower income groups, you are a gone case. Doctors and hospitals work with mercenary zeal these days. There have been many cases where doctors have been killed and kidnapped because of their callous attitude and behaviour.

Instead of being inspired by this stark Indian reality, Tanveer Khan’s creative juices start flowing after he watches a Hollywood film. The next thing he does is to get a DVD of the film, show it around to convince a producer and some actors and copy it blatantly. Even, presumably self- respecting actors like Irfaan Khan and Konkona would not let go of the opportunity. Why should they, when they see someone as secure and senior as the Big B doing it?

Though Tanveer changes the climax to suit Indian reality, it fails to work because he has copied the Hollywood film’s premise, story, and format lock, stock, and barrel. He finally lands up making a cheap copycat crime thriller, with very little cinematic or social relevance. He also loses the opportunity to exercise his imagination, and grow into a genuine filmmaker, who tells a genuine Indian story, inspired by a genuine Indian reality that has universal appeal.

Now, try looking at it this way. Suppose Tanveer Khan would have sought inspiration from day-to-day, contemporary, and highly relatable Indian reality and had developed the following premise: -
 

‘A story of a couple who lose their child because a famous surgeon refuses to operate on him till he gets his fees and then they decide to teach him a lesson’.

From here onwards he simply had to work out the contours of an original story with real characters imbued with strong motivations. Who knows, it may have turned out to be a better original Indian film than ‘Rang De Basanti’ and ‘Munnabhai’, with a moving message for humanity and a warning to medical professionals who have attitudes more suited to banias, bankers and brokers of all varieties. In the least, none would have blamed him for plagiarism.

And remember, all those who are talking about the dearth of film writers and ideas are liars. Are they really looking for great film ideas? No. They are not. It is a lot easier to show around the DVD of a mediocre Hollywood or Korean film and convince stars and producers to hop on to the Bollywood bandwagon.
 

RKS

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