Friday, March 13, 2009

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge-The Braveheart will take the bride

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge—{The Braveheart will take the Bride}(1994)—Shahrukh Khan, Kajol, Amrish Puri, Anupam Kher, directed by Aditya Chopra. I had to post this today--today marks the 700th week that DDLJ(as it is know to the Bollywood crowd) has played a matinee at the Maranthi theater in Mumbai. Not only is it the longest running film in Bollywood (and I suspect Hollywood), it won major awards at its release.
This is the movie that took Bollywood from the craptastic 80’s into the big production ‘90’s! This was Shahrukh Khan’s first big romantic lead flick (he had done really bad guys up till now) and he is paired with Kajol for the movie that tops it all. SRK did not really want to do a romantic lead (a so called 'chocolate box hero'), and it took his buddy Aditya Chopra a lot of convincing to make him do this movie. This movie was Aditya Chopra’s directorial debut—and sets standards for romantic movies from this point on. This is a typical star crossed lover story that was popular at the time. What made this movie different, was that both of these characters were NRI (non resident Indians-Chopra realised that this was a great market to aim for). Raj and Simran both grew up in London--Simran's father is a very strict traditional Indian father. Raj's single, very wealthy father, has a 'buddy' relationship with his son. When Raj flunks out of college, his father suggests a cross European trip for him to decide what he wants to do with his life. Simran, however, has been promised from a young age, to a young man in her father's home village-she begs her dad to let her take a cross European trip with her friends before she heads to a country she does not know to marry an unknown man.
Well, as you can see, the pair meet--at first they do not hit it off, and a series of crazy incidents, makes Simran come to loath the freewheeling Raj. Well, the stars are with(or some may say against) them and they fall in love. Raj finds out that Simran is engaged, but that is not an impediment-he follows her to India!
Unlike many other movies prior to this, Raj does not wish to run off with his lady love-even when Simran's mother hands them her wedding gold and tells them to, Raj wishes to take his bride away with permission and consent. Raj sets out to woo the family —he begins with the women of the family. He ingratiates himself to the grooms family as well--well after much singing, dancing and fighting-Raj--the brave heart--takes his bride! This is such a wonderful movie that many tried to copy it, but not have come close.

1 comment:

  1. Surely one of the all time greats--with humor, fighting, music and dance, color, and weddings, what's not to love?

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