HUM DIL DE CHUKE SANAM
("I've already given my heart, Dear")
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HUM DIL DE CHUKE SANAM ("I've already given my heart, Dear") |
1999. Directed by Sanjay
Leela Bhansali, 188 mins. Hindi. Music by Ismail Darbar, lyrics by Mehboob.
Given that the plot of this big-budget film is heavily indebted to HUM AAPKE
HAIN KOUN! and DILWALE DULHANIYA LE JAYENGE (with a few twists thrown in) and
that the two principal characters are pretty, pouty, and shallow, the real "stars"
are the surreal locations and sets, which (through Anil Mehta's cinematography)
revel in yantric geometries, suggesting, say, M. C. Escher on bhang. The action
moves from an imaginary Guja-Rajasthan, where the heroine lives with her unaccountably-rich
musician clan amid towering sand dunes and sparkling lakes, to an imaginary
Italy, which is in fact (the apparently cheaper and more convenient) Budapest
and environs. The latter locale provides a fine example of the purely generic
nature of the Western topos, as the filmmakers are unconcerned by the fact that
the broadly-gesticulating locals are shouting at one another in Hungarian and
speaking English with thick Magyar accents. Who cares, when videshis are merely
faceless extras and what really counts are soaring church spires, bright-colored
trams, and illuminated suspension bridges?
Doe-eyed, slim-waisted Nandini (the stunning Aishwarya Rai) lives in a house
that pushes the palatial standard of HAHK up several notches—a sort-of
hilltop version of the Lake Palace Hotel, used to great advantage in musical
numbers that largely celebrate (Hindu) celebrations: Diwali, Holi, the women's
fast-day of Karwa Chauth, and the start of kite-flying season (which shows what
Busby Berkeley might have done had he known Indian kites). The family patriarch
lives for his vocal art and his pampered daughters, who flit through a kaleidescope
of shimmering fabrics, flickering oil lamps, and mirrorwork. Into this idyllic
ethnoscape blows the proverbial NRI inside-outsider: here, a Hindi-speaking
Italo-Indian hunk named Sameer ("breeze," Salman Khan) with poor cultural
skills and a penchant for removing his shirt—leaving him with merely an
array of tight jeans in every hue. He also sings "from the heart,"
charming the patriarch, and, in time, wooing his daughter through his trademark
Hyperactive Attentiveness. Despite all this, Sameer is "not Indian!"
and so Maam and Baap eventually banish the Breeze and pair up Nandini's horoscope
with that of a nice, rich lawyer named Vanraj (Ajay Devgan), who is "unattractive"
(i.e., slightly dark), flabby, and tone-deaf. He has a big heart, though, and
big, suffering eyes, which are fully deployed once he realizes that his chilly
bride has "already given her heart" to another, and selflessly whisks
her off to Buda-ly in search of the elusive Sameer.
Cameos by two venerable actresses (Zohra Sehgal as Nandini's grandmother, and Helen as Sameer's mom) spice up the two halves of the film. Although just how Sameer and his Hindi-speaking mother ended up in the West is never explained, his absent father—who communicates with him through peals of thunder and church altarpieces—seems to have been the Holy Spirit. This alone might appear to qualify Sameer to win the Princess Bride, but then Christianity (like Euro-ethnicity) is here merely another chip in a glitzy, global mirrorwork which is ultimately held together by the irreproachable suhaag maalaa (marriage necklace) of the auspicious Hindu woman. As with other big-budget films in its immediate family (HAHK, DDLJ, PARDES, KUCH KUCH HOTA HAI, etc.), HUM DIL's opulent but hegemonically-Hindu world looks more than a little ominous in the contemporary socio-political context.