Dil Dhadakne Do (Hindi, Let the Heart Beat; 2015)
Everyone looks at something and sees what he wants to see. On surface, it looks like a usual Bollywood fare of forced marriage, forbidden love with the take home message of love conquers all. Scratch a little deeper, you would realise that there are more that meets the eyes than the eye candy costume, beau stars and the catchy hip gyrating foot tapping songs.
DDD is a story of a self made entrepreneur, Kamal Mehra, his wife, Neelam who are both celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary on a Mediterranean cruise with their friends and relatives. The celebratory function is an avenue to showcase their wealth to show people that they have arrived. The wife feels that the marriage is nothing more than an empty shell. Kamal is busy making money and have other ideas about social life. The daughter, Ayesha (Priyanka Chopra) is trapped with a husband (Manav Sangha, Rahul Bose) after the love of her life (Sunny Gill, Farhan Aftar) was conveniently packed off to study in USA. The son, Kabir, (Ranveer Singh), feel small and cannot fit into his father's big boots. At the same time, Kamal and Neelam plan to get Kabir to hitch up with a potential business partner's daughter so as to ease business.
With that big baggage, the family and friends start the 10 day cruise.
The Indian diaspora has spread the world over and there is no place Indians have not seen, at least on the silver screen. Till very recent, Switzerland remained a place every true blooded Indian wanted to be but most movies from the Indian sub-continent have overkilled the desire by making way too many dream scenes there! So, this time around it was on a cruise around Mediterranean and Turkey.
Hell broke loose albeit in a light hearted manner as love goes awfully wrong. Cupid starts shooting arrows at the wrong couple. Kabir falls in love with a Muslim dancer (Farah, Anushka Sharma). Ayesha demands divorce and Kamal has the bear the brunt of years of neglect of his domesticated wife.
As I was saying, different viewers will take home different cues from the movie. The youngsters and the young at heart will feel triumphed as the parents gave in to the pressures of the young love. Despite the religious and class differences, young love won. Those trapped in mundane uninteresting marriages or even uneventful marriages would feel that there is a need to be liberated from the shackles of societal expectations and stereotypes. Some how they would feel that there is something wrong in our family dynamics. Perhaps, they forget that the equation changes when an offspring shows up.
The older generation would see that they have been a slave of the system. They slog to escape the clutches of poverty to elevate themselves up the rung of social class only to realise that their endeavours all these while have come to naught. Their offspring do not share the same fire in their belly. Money and desire to accumulate wealth does not mean much to them. Perhaps they forget that they have been influenced by the media of the socialist societies where the state cares for you. Here, in a third world country, every man is on his own! Have they been wrong to think that their sole purpose in life was to improve living conditions of the elders and their dependants just like how their fathers singlehandedly put dinner on the table and with his meagre minimal earning wages educated, fed, dressed and cared for the family years ago?
N.B. I initially thought the family was Muslim. With names like Kamal, Kabir, Ayesha, Noorie, Manav, I cannot be penalised. Amir Khan gives a voiceover to the family dog, Pluto, who seem to be the narrator who pokes fun at the double faced nature, double speak and contradiction of the human race.
Everyone looks at something and sees what he wants to see. On surface, it looks like a usual Bollywood fare of forced marriage, forbidden love with the take home message of love conquers all. Scratch a little deeper, you would realise that there are more that meets the eyes than the eye candy costume, beau stars and the catchy hip gyrating foot tapping songs.
DDD is a story of a self made entrepreneur, Kamal Mehra, his wife, Neelam who are both celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary on a Mediterranean cruise with their friends and relatives. The celebratory function is an avenue to showcase their wealth to show people that they have arrived. The wife feels that the marriage is nothing more than an empty shell. Kamal is busy making money and have other ideas about social life. The daughter, Ayesha (Priyanka Chopra) is trapped with a husband (Manav Sangha, Rahul Bose) after the love of her life (Sunny Gill, Farhan Aftar) was conveniently packed off to study in USA. The son, Kabir, (Ranveer Singh), feel small and cannot fit into his father's big boots. At the same time, Kamal and Neelam plan to get Kabir to hitch up with a potential business partner's daughter so as to ease business.
With that big baggage, the family and friends start the 10 day cruise.The Indian diaspora has spread the world over and there is no place Indians have not seen, at least on the silver screen. Till very recent, Switzerland remained a place every true blooded Indian wanted to be but most movies from the Indian sub-continent have overkilled the desire by making way too many dream scenes there! So, this time around it was on a cruise around Mediterranean and Turkey.
Hell broke loose albeit in a light hearted manner as love goes awfully wrong. Cupid starts shooting arrows at the wrong couple. Kabir falls in love with a Muslim dancer (Farah, Anushka Sharma). Ayesha demands divorce and Kamal has the bear the brunt of years of neglect of his domesticated wife.
As I was saying, different viewers will take home different cues from the movie. The youngsters and the young at heart will feel triumphed as the parents gave in to the pressures of the young love. Despite the religious and class differences, young love won. Those trapped in mundane uninteresting marriages or even uneventful marriages would feel that there is a need to be liberated from the shackles of societal expectations and stereotypes. Some how they would feel that there is something wrong in our family dynamics. Perhaps, they forget that the equation changes when an offspring shows up.
The older generation would see that they have been a slave of the system. They slog to escape the clutches of poverty to elevate themselves up the rung of social class only to realise that their endeavours all these while have come to naught. Their offspring do not share the same fire in their belly. Money and desire to accumulate wealth does not mean much to them. Perhaps they forget that they have been influenced by the media of the socialist societies where the state cares for you. Here, in a third world country, every man is on his own! Have they been wrong to think that their sole purpose in life was to improve living conditions of the elders and their dependants just like how their fathers singlehandedly put dinner on the table and with his meagre minimal earning wages educated, fed, dressed and cared for the family years ago?
N.B. I initially thought the family was Muslim. With names like Kamal, Kabir, Ayesha, Noorie, Manav, I cannot be penalised. Amir Khan gives a voiceover to the family dog, Pluto, who seem to be the narrator who pokes fun at the double faced nature, double speak and contradiction of the human race.
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