In a new installment of This Day That Year, Subhash K Jha turns the spotlight on Haan…Maine Bhi Pyaar Kiya, which starred Abhishek Bachchan, Karisma Kapoor and Akshay Kumar and haan… it has been 24 years since it released.
Somewhere in the second half of this marital drama about Man, Woman and Angel, Kader Khan, playing a valet to a strangely benevolent film star Akshay Kumar, tells Abhishek Bachchan, “What films they used to make in the old days! And what stars. There never has been another Yusuf Khan (Dilip Kumar).”
Well, precisely. The behemoths of Bollywood are behind us. Dharmesh Darshan belongs to the newer cinema savvy generation of directors who have their fingers on the audiences’ pulse. Every heartbeat in Darshan’s Dhadkan and now Haan…Maine Bhi Pyaar Kiya is designed to wean viewers into a state of submissive ecstacy. The volume of emotions and the noise decibel in every sequence is modulated to melodramatic requirements, so that we’re never given opportunity to question the improbability factor in the high-rise architecture that Dharamesh Darshan builds for the masses.
Returning to the theme of marital strife that worked so effectively in Raja Hindustani, Dharamesh Darshan has cast Karisma Kapoor and Abhishek Bachchan as husband and wife who are torn apart after the husband Shiv has a one-nnight stand in Switzerland (described in the film as “Every Indian’s dream”) with an old college friend(Simone Singh).
The adulterous tryst signifying a terrible breach of trust is thrust on us in a most unbecoming manner. The lovemaking sequence in a motel in Switzerland should have been done sensitively. Instead, the director would have us believe that Shiv has sex with a woman he meets after years only because her clothes get drenched and the sheet covering her body drops off. Feelings come nowhere in the picture.
In a way such surface readings of serious domestic and social problems such as marital infidelity and casual sex goes with the sur (tenor) of Dharamesh film. Shiv’s enraged wife Pooja walks out on her husband, straight into the inviting arms of an incredibly well-behaved film star Raj (Akshay Kumar) who has no vices , only virtues, and a retinue of three skittish slaves(Himani Shivpuri, Shakti Kapoor, Kader Khan) who fawn over every nuance in their lord and master’s voice.
In the beautifully fluid introductory song sequence ‘Mehboob ki aankhon mein’ , the director captures the efferevescent innocence of Akshay Kumar’s personality. Akshay has played the angelic soul earlier in Dhadkan. After the diabolic digression in Ajnabee it’s good to see his serene personality being put to such narcotic use .
Haan…Maine Bhi Pyaar Kiya is Abhishek Bachchan’s acid test. In an author-backed role he has the chance to express a range of emotions from elation to rejection. Unfortunately the character lacks deeper shades. The narrative devices a string of flighty incidents to project Shiv’s boyish innocence when confronted by predatory and therefore “dangerous” women. And if Shiv’s encounter with the bimbo-like seductress (Shweta Menon) on a Ferris Wheel is preposterous, the encounter with an agressively suggestive doodhwali (Upaasna Singh) smacks of crowd-wooing vulgarity.
There are other comic escapades that cut into the narrative with slicing suddeness. To his credit, director Dharamesh Darshan downsizes the drollery, modulates the melodrama to retain the essential sensitivity of the triangle. The end-game at a scenic sanctuary where the benign star wooes and almost marries his secretary-cum-lady-in-waiting Pooja right under her lovelorn ex-husband Shiv’s pained eyes, is a crisply cut delectable piece of melodramatic cinema with Karisma catching on to the demands of the tubulent triangular mood with seasoned effortlessness.
More than the other two players it’s Karisma who blossoms as a screen performer under the stewardship of the actor who provided her career with a turning point in Raja Hindustani. In Dharamesh’s new film Karisma rises to razor-sharp summits in sequences such as the one where she questions the hotel’s receptionist about the manager who also happens to be her ex-husband. Unlike her co-star, she’s also comfortable doing the earlier flippant scenes.
While Abhishek is brilliantly adept in the emotional second-half where his eyes convey cascades of unstoppable pain, he walks edgily under his illustrious father’s shadow in the comic sequences. Abhishek’s discomfort with exaggerated emotions shows up on screen.
Unlike Dhadkan, where Dharamesh revealed a uniform sense of narrative ripeness, in Haan…Maine Bhi Pyaar Kiya … he vacillates between personal integrity and aggressive boxoffice manoeuvrings that leave the narration gasping for breath. Every actor from the subtly-inclined Akshay, Abhishek and Mohnish Behl to the melodrama-friendly Karisma, Supriya Karnik and Himani Shivpuri seems to be thrown into a state of agitated anxiety by the plot’s peddle-pushing emotions.
Dharmesh Darshan celebrates all the traditional emotions of commercial Hindi cinema with a great deal relish. His theory of narration is simple: listen to your heart carefully , and you’re bound to hear echoes of the nation’s collective consciousness . We’re swept away in the cyclone of emotions that spill out of Dharmesh’s perceptions , though not quite with the same force as in the director’s Dhadkan.
Nadeem-Shravan’s music and Manish Malhotra’s costumes, though a little too bright to portray life’s actual colours, enchance the mood of flamboyant expression.
