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fromhollywoodtobollywood · 7 years

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Alright, people my first Bollywood movie is...

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) dir. Karan Johar

This movie is...a lot of things. It is three hours long so lots of shit goes down. I struggle trying to fit this in to a typical 3-Act Hollywood screenplay structure because it feels like two movies in one. If it were released in the US, the second half would be released a year later as a sequel to the first. But I digress...Let’s begin.

The story opens with Rahul (Shah Rukh Khan) and his wife, Tina (Rani Mukerji). They are in love! They are married! They are having a baby! It’s a girl! But tragedy strikes. Shortly after Tina gives birth, a doctor informs Rahul that she is suffering from severe internal bleeding. Internal bleeding that she somehow knew was going to happen? I’m pretty sure that’s not how internal bleeding works. Anyway, even though this woman is “profusely bleeding” (doctor’s words) on the inside, she still has the composure and stamina to say proper goodbyes to her husband and write a series of letters to her baby daughter (to be given to her each year on her birthday). I realize if I don’t suspend my disbelief, I may not get though the first 20 minutes of this movie. But seriously, they can’t find a medical consultant in India? I’m Indian, and I can name five MDs in my family. Back to the story: Tina makes her husband promise two things: One, that he will never cry because he looks ugly when he does. That’s going to be fantastic for his toxic sense of masculinity. And two: That they name their baby daughter Anjali. It’s a perfectly normal promise and a cute name. Anyway, she dies, he ugly-cries and we are transported to...

MUMBAI, 8 Years Later (I’m assuming this is 1998 based on the year the film was released)

Anjali (Sana Saeed) is now a super-cute kid on the eve of her 8th birthday. While it’s never established what Rahul does for a living, he’s pretty loaded by any standard. 8-year-old Anjali has a camcorder in her room and her own TV with MTV India. In her spare time, she pretends to be an MTV VJ like Neelam. Anjali speaks a charming mixture of Hindi and English that she clearly learned from MTV. She says things like “I’ll be back next week: Same time, same place.” Anjali loves chocolates and wants to be a VJ when she grows up. The character of Anjali is approximately my age so by the time she’s old enough, MTV won’t have VJs, it’ll just be Teen Moms. BUT ANYWAY, she leaves the house to meet her dad on a bridge and this is where things get a little...freudian. Her father is two hours late to meet her (so this little kid has been standing alone in the middle of Mumbai for two hours). When he sees her, he tries to win back her good graces with flowers, chocolates, and a teddy bear like a fuckboy who forgot it was Valentine’s Day and ran to CVS. In this moment, his daughter says she is “tired” of having to be his daughter and his wife (because she picks out his clothes). He responds with “Well, if I have to be your mom AND dad, then you can...” He doesn’t finish the thought because it’s creepy as fuck. But they quickly apologize, do a cute handshake thing, and head home. At home they run in to Grandma (Farida Jalal) who is leading a Hindu Bahjan group of older ladies. She is very pious and has the same shruti machine as my grandmother. Anjali runs in and greets her Grandmother with a TOTALLY APPROPRIATE “Hi, sexy!” greeting. If I had done this to my grandmother (during bhajans, no less) she would have smacked me. Seriously, why is this kid allowed to have MTV in her room?

We then see a speech competition at Anjali’s school where kids are given a random word and have to speak extemporaneously on that subject for one minute. It’s weird but at this point, not the strangest thing that’s happened in this movie. Anjali is pitted against a girl named Jasminder (like ‘Bend it Like Beckham”!) and of COURSE the word Anjali gets is “Mother.” She begins to cry on stage when her dad steps on stage and basically does her speech for her because she is sad. The audience thinks this is adorable and he gets a standing ovation. We return to Rahul’s mansion where he plays basketball inside near one of those Beyoncé hair fans. This house is off the chain. His mother implores him to get re-married for the sake of his happiness and Anjali’s. Rahul insists that love and marriage are something that only happen once in a lifetime. He also says Anjali is alright because she has the letters from her mother. Sure. Because a birthday letter totally makes up for not having a mom.

The next morning, Anjali awakes on her birthday in her truly spectacular bedroom (seriously, what does Rahul do for a living?) and runs down stairs to a stack of presents that would make Dudley Dursley jealous. She pushes all the presents aside to find the letter from her mother. In a voice over, her mother says that this year’s letter will be different from the past. This year, her mother is going to tell her a story about Rahul, Tina, and someone named Anjali. Hashtag, intrigue.

FLASHBACK to Xavier College in the late 1980s

Rahul (still Shah Rukh Khan…they didn’t pull a Chandler Bing/Zac Efron thing here) is playing basketball flirtatiously with a young woman named…Anjali (Kajol.) OG Anjali is smart, funny, and a fantastic athlete (although nothing they do resembles real basketball). However, we KNOW she can’t be taken seriously as a love interest for Rahul because she has short hair and dresses like a combination of Sporty Spice and Dennis the Menace.

A few words about the fashion choices in this film: Although this is supposed to be the 1980s, everyone is dressed like it’s the late 90s. Rahul runs around campus in that GAP sweatshirt and Ralph Lauren rugby shirts that were ubiquitous in the late 1990s. OG Anjali wears a lot of cute but anachronistic, DKNY, Adidas, and Nike separates. No one wears a mullet, no one has feathered/permed hair, nobody’s jeans are acid washed. I have no problem with flashbacks in movies but the fashion and hairstyling make it seem like this is still 1998. Also, does Bollywood have a pass when it comes to showing licensed products and characters? So far I’ve seen a Tweety Bird, a Coke logo, a Pepsi machine, and a background character carrying a Mickey Mouse binder. It doesn’t feel like intentional product placement and I wonder how they got away with this.

Back to OG Anjali and Rahul. While they play “basketball” one accuses the other of cheating and they get in a fight. This brings us to our first SONG AND DANCE BREAK. Honestly, this is why I signed up for watching Bollywood movies. Unfortunately, there are no subtitles for the songs so I can only guess what they are about based on context clues. This one appears to be about Rahul and Anjali’s basketball fight which happened in private but is discussed on the campus radio station. So Anjali dances with her friends, Rahul dances with his and by the end of the song, they are friends again. The song has a fun beat and the choreography is pretty on point. This is probably the second most musically talented school after East High (What team? WILDCATS!). This song would have worked really well as a stand-alone music video and single but of course, this is Bollywood/India so a song can't just be a song.

We return to campus as usual where the principal (Anupam Kher) is waging a war on short skirts. Meanwhile, he ogles a particularly attractive member of the faculty (and so do the male students). I want to take this moment to say that while Hollywood films aren’t always *great* in regards to how they treat the female body, there is something particularly noxious about the male gaze in this film. Sexually objectifying a student or a teacher is just a fun, quirky thing the men in this movie do. It’s especially troubling to think about how Bollywood portrayals of this type of harassment influence Indian gender politics. If anyone has a suggestion for a Bollywood movie where women are visually treated with respect, please let me know. BUT ANYWAY, the actor who plays the principal is actually someone I recognized from playing the dad in “Bend it Like Beckham” and the dad in “Bride and Prejudice.” When I looked him up on IMDB, I learned he is probably the most prolific working actor in the world. Dude has THREE HUNDRED AND NINETY ONE acting credits to his name. Congrats on the career, man. He is happily talking to OG Anjali, a good student and a “good girl” who doesn’t wear short skirts like “other girls” (kill me, please). Principal Malhotra mentions that his daughter (who lives in London but somehow goes to Oxford) is going to do her final year of college at Xavier.

When we meet Principal Malhotra’s daughter she is none other than Tina, (Rani Mukerji) Little Anjali’s mom. We can tell Rahul is into her because there is music and he stops flirting with another woman when she walks in the room. We all know he eventually marries her and fathers her child so this meet-cute is a little anti-climactic. The real magic happens when OG Anjali meets Tina. Seriously, these two share some LOOKS and have some palpable sexual chemistry. If homosexuality weren’t literally a crime in India, I’d like to see these two in a rom com about how they fall in love and scam Shah Rukh Khan for his sperm so they can raise their daughter away from the ever-present male gaze. They have more chemistry with each other than either of them has with Rahul. I’m shipping this so hard and it’s not going to happen.

On campus, Tina faces a very specific form of harassment. Since she dresses modestly, is conventionally attractive, and the principal’s daughter, she is not openly catcalled the way other female students are but Rahul and his bros (in a pretty shitty flirting attempt) ask her to “prove” she’s “Indian enough” by singing in Hindi. Apparently, because she lives in the UK, that means she’s westernized and no longer “Indian.” There is so much wrong with this that I simply cannot. Sorry, that’s the westernized white girl in me talking. In all seriousness, Rahul is supposed to be the campus Cassanova and his idea of flirting is making a woman publicly “prove” her cultural identity. It is hella problematic #notwoke. Tina slays her rendition her rendition of “Om Jai Jagdish Hare.” This is a song sung during Aarti at Hindu prayers. Even I, a culturally beige-washed American, know the chorus and a few verses of this song because if I didn’t sing a long and stay for Aarti, I didn’t get ladoo and ladoo is delicious.

Now we get to the structural problems with this script. A half an hour passes with that is pertinent to the plot of the film. There is a student talent show that is completely irrelevant to the overall plot of the film and simply another excuse for a song and dance. It’s a great song. If they played this at a party, I would not be mad. Tina, Rahul, and OG Anjali essentially improv a full performance and it goes over like gangbusters. It also seems to be an excuse to dress Tina and OG Anjali like 2/5ths of The Spice Girls. Tina is Posh. OG Anjali is a strange mixture of Sporty and Baby. Again, a fun song but would work better as a single. The title song of this film is set among the ruins of a Scottish castle (seriously). For all the shit Rahul gave Tina for going to school in the UK, he seems super content wearing his GAP sweatshirt while singing and dancing in the land of his colonialist oppressor. Sadly, the title song is the least catchy of the film and doesn’t seem to make much sense. Are they all having the same dream about Scotland? Is it a paid advertisement for popular athletic brands of the 1990s? Is it a political statement about India, Scotland, and British colonialism? Who the fuck knows.

We finally come to an important plot point. In an English class taught by the sexually subversive faculty member who wears miniskirts, the students are reading Romeo and Juliet. TANGENT: The professor’s notes on Romeo and Juliet are covered in pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. These are licensed images from the 1996 film. How did this get past Baz Luhrmann’s lawyers? Tangent aside, instead of asking the students specific questions about the text (or movie), she poses the super deep question: What is love? *insert “A Night at The Roxbury” reference here* Really? What is love? Poor Tina. She left Oxford for this? Rahul answers the question with the level of intellect and sophistication we come to expect from him. He says “love is friendship” causing both Tina and OG Anjali to believe that he is in love with his best friend, OG Anjali. We know this is not true because Tina and OG Anjali are the real love story of this movie. WHY ELSE WOULD SHE NAME HER DAUGHTER AFTER HER?

At this point, OG Anjali believes she has feelings for Rahul and becomes weepy-eyed. When she goes to him to confess her feelings in a wheat field (as one does), he greets her with a confession of love. He then retracts it without giving her a chance to respond and says he was just practicing for when he plans to tell Tina. This guy is the goddamned worst. Why are we supposed to like him, again? OG Anjali responds to this the way any intelligent, self-possessed woman would: By dropping out of college. Rahul and Tina are upset and try to get her to get off the train. She does not. Cool. Way to make a great life decision. Which brings us back to…

LITTLE ANJALI CRYING WHILE READING THIS IN A LETTER. Remember Little Anjali? It’s her birthday? She somehow managed to be a sweet kid despite being raised by MTV and a borderline negligent father. This is the halfway point in the film. Seriously, this shit is only half over.

It’s now up to Little Anjali to reunite her father and her namesake. She decides to play a word-association game she learned by watching MTV-India to get more background information on OG Anjali. This misguided little girl starts the game by jumping on her father’s back and asking him what word he thinks of when he thinks of the word “sexy”. She says this while on his back. The visual isn’t great. Rahul responds to the “sexy” prompt with the name of HIS MOTHER. This family needs some serious therapy or they are tip-toeing treacherously close to Greek Tragedy territory. Anyway, when she says “Anjali”, he responds with “Sharma” (OG Anajli’s last name). While this seems farfetched that he’d say her last name when his own daughter Anjali is being carried on his back, it’s is not even the most bizarre thing to happen in the last five minutes of this movie.

Little Anjali and the grandmother ask more questions about Anjali Sharma. Rahul says she was his best friend in college. He explains that OG Anjali “wasn’t like other girls” because she enjoyed sports and didn’t “wear make up or short skirts.” “She was one of the guys,” he explains with a smile. I’m starting to think that OG Anjali is just the Bollywood iteration of the Hollywood “cool girl.” I want to take this moment to say that not all American exports are good. Sure, we may have given the world Diet Coke and “Hamilton” but this concept of the female lead who is “not like other girls” is hashtag problematic as hell. “Not like other girls” implies that it is somehow better to be in the company of men and masculinity than it is to be among things and people deemed “feminine.” While it’s on the surface empowering, it’s underlying message is steeped in outdated and patriarchy perpetuating myths about gender. Additionally, no girl is like all “other girls” because women and girls make up 3.5 billion people worldwide. Each girl and woman has her own interests, passions, and opinions that make her unique. It makes me truly sad to see other cultures adopt this “not like other girls concept” and use it to propagate problematic gender norms in their own societies.

That last paragraph was brought to you by my Seven Sisters education. Back to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai- Rahul, his mother, and Little Anjali head back to Xavier College to see Tina’s father on the anniversary of her death. While there, they decide to look up Anjali Sharma. Principal Malhotra says that he knows someone who might be able to help. Rifat Bi, the housemother of the girls dormitory remembers every student and as it turns out is still in touch with Anjali.

A note about Rifat Bi: She is a devout Muslim woman and when she is introduced, the Muslim call to prayer is used as background music. I am ashamed to say that as an Indian-American raised in an increasingly Islamophobic society, I heard that music and got scared-like white lady walking through Compton scared. I thought some “Homeland” shit was about to go down. And I’m a liberal! I voted and volunteered for Hillary! But as ashamed as it made me feel to feel fear upon hearing “Allah u Akbar,” I used this as an opportunity to challenge my Islamophobic assumptions. Rifat is a helpful and kind woman who does what she can to help the Khanna family find OG Anjali. When she gets a phone call that OG Anjali is engaged, she tearfully tells the family the news. At this point, Little Anjali (instead of crying) puts on a hijab and sits on a prayer mat. Although this plot point is Kellyanne Conway level ridiculous, it’s actually a very earnest expression of interfaith prayer and a rare positive portrayal of Islam. While little Anjali prays, Rifat gets another phone call to say Anjali’s wedding has been postponed until December because of astrology.

So what has become of OG Anjali? Well, she’s engaged to an NRI (that’s Non-Resident Indian) who lives/works in London. Her fiancé is a man and I was a little bummed by that (sigh, India). OG Anjali now presents herself in a more traditionally feminine way. Now when we see her, her hair is long, her eyebrows threaded, and she is wearing…makeup. Granted, it is her engagement party but she doesn’t go back to wearing track pants or jeans for the rest of the film. I guess now that she has feminized herself in a traditionally Indian way, she’s the focal point of this second-half love triangle. Her fiancé, Aman Mehra (Salman Khan) seems like a cool dude and he and his bros have some sick dance moves. If Pinterest existed in India in 1998, pictures and video of this scene would have been a bigger wedding trend than mason jars. Aman is also infinitely more watchable, charismatic, and attractive than Shah Rukh Khan. He is not quite the match for OG Anjali that Tina was but she’s dead and nobody’s perfect.

OG Anjali wants to take some time while Aman goes back to London to teach singing/dancing to kids at a summer camp. Little Anjali finds out about this by calling the engagement venue and eavesdropping on the conversation OG Anjali and Aman have about the camp. With new knowledge about the summer camp, Anjali begs her dad to go. He says absolutely not because she has never shown any interest in singing or dancing. Really? This kid watches MTV all day Does Rahul know nothing about his kid? God, he’s the worst. Rahul leaves on an “Exporter’s Trip” (so he’s an “exporter”...is that a job? whatever) to London leaving Little Anjali in the care of her grandmother. While he is at the conference he runs in to Aman and there is a bit of confusion with the phones when both Anjalis call at the same time. The men share a laugh before telling the other “best of luck with your Anjali.” Get it? Because women are property!

Little Anjali and her grandmother use this opportunity to escape to OG Anjali’s summer camp. Gotta hand it to Little Anjali for enlisting adult help. If this were a Hollywood film, she would have stolen her dad’s credit card number (I’m looking at you, “Sleepless in Seattle”). Anjali and her grandmother head to the camp and it’s actually pretty cute. Mrs. Khanna schools the Anglophile camp director on colonialism and goes as far as to dismantle his portrait of Elizabeth I. Honestly, I’d like to watch a movie about an Indian grandmother dismantling colonialist symbols and taking back her power but alas, this is as fruitless as wishing for a queer romance in a Bollywood film. Meanwhile, Little Anjali meets her name sake while dressed like a “Dora the Explorer” cosplayer. Rahul (Parent of the Fucking Century) decides to use MTV to reach out to his daughter and says “Anjali, I miss you, please come home.” OG Anjali hears this and briefly thinks Rahul is talking about her. In that moment, she realizes Little Anjali is Tina and Rahul’s daughter. OG Anjali cries dramatically upon seeing the picture of Tina that Little Anjali sleeps with. Shortly after the identities are revealed, Little Anjali leaves a message for her father with the sound of her sneezing and he runs dramatically to the camp. Remember, this is the same man who left his child to wander the streets of Mumbai for two hours.

Rahul arrives at the camp while the children are singing “Ragupati Raghava Rajaram”-a song I sang every morning as a child. Unlike my childhood prayer, this song has a dance floor beat. I think you could probably play this at The Abbey in West Hollywood and it would be a hit. If I heard this version while sipping a G&T and talking to my new best friend about the red carpet at Cannes, I’d be weirded out in the best possible way. Rahul walks in just in time for ladoo (sweet timing, dude) and calls for Anjali. Both his daughter and his love interest respond-that’s not a Freudian nightmare at all. OG Anjali and share a cinematic moment. Rahul decides to just stay at the camp with his daughter and mother while they sing dance out some feelings of unrequited love and play “basketball.” Little Anjali is finally able to show off her singing and dancing skills. Girl has some skills. All that MTV has really paid off. All these background kids are seriously talented dancers. I can only imagine how good Disney Channel India is.

This is where things get *dramatic* again. OG Anjali remembers she is still engaged to Aman and leaves the camp in tears. A little boy in a turban who hasn’t talked before, cries and tells her not to leave. When Rahul sees OG Anjali leaving he hands her the scarf she was wearing the day she left college. Has he really had it this whole time? Also there are a ton of continuity errors with OG Anjali’s engagement ring-sometimes it’s garnet and others times it’s diamond. Is there no one whose job it is to check for these things? There are so many poor, unemployed people in India. Bollywood could solve a lot of problems if they hired some people to spot and avoid blatant continuity errors. Economics lecture aside, it starts to rain and who shows up but Aman saying he loves OG Anjali and is ready to get married because fuck astrology. Little Anjali and Rahul look distressed.

Little Anjali decides to try a little reverse psychology with Aman. She tells him that he is a very handsome man and could have any woman he would want. Why would he want to marry OG Anjali? God, she’s going to be a monstrous teenager. Aman (jokingly) goes along with what Little Anjali is saying. He says he is handsome and doesn’t have to settle for someone “dark and fat.” Way to reenforce colorism and body shaming, Bollywood. It’s not enough that this movie takes place in India and no one has a “dusky” complexion but let’s throw a little fat shaming in there as well. Nonetheless, Fair and Lovely ™ Aman says that he loves OG Anjali and is ready to get married.

At the wedding, OG Anjali can’t stop crying/thinking about Rahul and Little Anjali. When she comes down the stairs, Aman sees the distress in her face and lets her go. He tells her that he wants her to be happy even if it’s not with him. Besides, he says someone told him “he could have any woman he wants” and shoots Little Anjali a smile. This guy seems genuinely jazzed to be not getting married despite declaring his love in the rain just before this. Rahul and OG Anjali tearfully embrace and it’s assumed they end up together. Little Anjali cries tears of joy while wearing casual western wear. There is no way in hell I could have worn anything other than Indian clothes to someone’s fancy wedding. Little Anjali and Aman lead a pretty solid dance at the not wedding. A farfetched idea but hey, the choreography is on point-a pretty accurate description of the film as a whole.

#kuch kuch hota hai #bollywood #movie review #hollywood #indian #diaspora #american born desi

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