Everything in Rakesh Roshan’s Karan Arjun looks incongruous, at odds with contemporary cinema. Both Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan look like ancient clones of their current selves. They are not really the backbone of the plot.
Raakhee Gulzar and Amrish Puri are. Their embarrassing over-acting bordering on an incurable hamminess, could inspire an entire thesis on how good actors were coerced to go over-the-top in the 1990s, as it was believed that audiences of the past eras really wanted their favourites to ACT.
Directors who scream, “Aur acting aur acting!” from behind the camera until the actors fainted and feel to the ground. This actually happened to Twinkle Khanna during the shooting of Dharmesh Darshan’s Mela.
Karan Arjun is all about acting at gravity-defying decibel. The film moves at a rapid pace often at the cost of continuity. Rationale is not even a consideration. We are supposed to believe that the twins are both with the same faces in their next lives after they are mercilessly slaughtered by Durjan Singh’s men. Of course! Did we expect Rakesh Roshan to pay for two sets of superstars to play the twins in their double avatar? Budget naam ki cheez bhi toh hoti hai, Bhai! Thand rakh.
Every dialogue is an occasion of heightened squeals. Salman Khan as Karan and Shah Rukh Khan as inseparable brothers look nothing like siblings. In fact, I had raised this issue with director Rakesh Roshan who dismissed my misgivings as nitpicking. “Are we going to select actors as brothers according to their facial resemblance? Isn’t acting about make believe?”
Agreed, but the two Khans don’t even try to look affectionate towards one another. Rajesh Roshan’s hit ditty on brotherly bonding Yeh bandhan toh pyar ka bandhan hai was ripped off by Rajesh Roshan from his father Roshan Lal Nagrath’s song Bahot diya dene walon ne tujkho sung by Mukesh in the film Soorat Aur Seerat.
When I asked the junior Roshan he had denied any similarity to his father’s composition. This self-delusion went well with the mood of the rest of the mock-epic tone of the film. The theme of reincarnation had failed repeatedly when Rakesh Roshan had taken up the challenge.
“I focussed on the reincarnation films which had worked at the box-office like Madhumati and Milan, not on the ones that didn’t work,” Rakesh Roshan told me. “We never thought the theme would be liked so much by the audience.”
The rant of reincarnation on screen could be heard all the way to the box-office. But is it a wise idea to bring back a film that is clearly no more in sync with the times?
