Adjusting the focus in this installment of This Day That Year Subhash K Jha revisits director Sohail Khan’s film, Maine Dil Tujhko Diya, where he also makes his acting debut, which clocks 23 years.
Often while sitting through a conventional masala movie we wonder what the hell we’re doing here. But have you seriously wondered , why the hell a film was made in the first place? Maine Dil Tujhko Diya prompts us to seriously think why another film about the poor upright macho kid and his simpering rich child-bride needed to be made when in fact, we have dozens of those swamping the cinema halls over the years.
Watching the campus toughie Sohail staring moony-eyed at the trembling fresher Sameera Reddy in the first few reels , we know immediately that the film is in serious trouble unless it suddenly pulls out a few rabbits from its tattered hat to liven up the rapidly plummeting fortunes of this soppy romantic misdemeanour.
Halfway through the unevenly directed mush, director Khan conjures Sanjay Dutt as the gangster hired by the heroine’s rich and arrogant father (Kabir Bedi) and his friend (Dalip Tahil) to eliminate the hero. Dutt strides onto the screen with his habitual panther-like agility. Unfortunately, his role is incoherently embedded into the calcified plot. In his disappointingly sporadic appearances all Dutt does is pray and fight, fight and pray, like a badly misconceived yin and yang of life.
As we watch him play the conflicted gangster for the umpteenth time we wonder what possible demons drive Dutt into endorsing the very image that threatens to permanently damage his life and career in real life. It’s deeply disturbing to see this actor’s obsession with gangsterism on screen , since it has now spilt over into his real life.
As a director Sohail Khan did some fairly delightful jaunty romantic work in Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya where he had cast his two brothers Salman and Arbaaz as Kajol’s good#hearted, noble lover-boy and her over-possessive brother, respectively. Maine Dil Tujhko Diya… is bloodier, louder, more aggressive and far less engaging interpretation of the same theme.
Vain and anachronistic elements of youthful vigour are introduced into the new-millennium Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya. The students on the campus behave like members of a defunct rock band. For some bizarre reason they play soccer on Mumbai’s beach in shiny new outfits that seem to have come straight from Los Angeles and probably packed right back after the sporty eruption. Their principal Neeraj Vora doesn’t believe in love marriages and serves in the capacity of a priest when the rebellious protagonists finally tie the knot after a sanguinary slash-and-maim climax that makes Rambo look like Bambi.
Designed as a violent love story, Maine Dil… is much too violent and just not romantic enough. The fights seem inspired by Ram Gopal Varma’s gangster films. And when the debutant hero is shown doing double and triple takes and multiple somersaults, he just can’t match the casual elan of his brother Salman Khan or Akshay Kumar.
As a dramatic actor too, Sohail barely passes muster. Beyond the city-slick grin and grimace, his face registers only a couple of emotions . But he’s pleasantly pacy in a couple of innovatively choreographed numbers.
Khan’s co-star Sameera Reddy is in dire need of a voice trainer. She speaks the most dramatic lines like numbers out of telephone directory. Efforts to appear diffident are boobytrapped when this supposedly inhibited heiress plays sooccer and jives with the guys. Kabir Bedi as her dad is given the thankless task of mouthing outrageously primitive lines like, “Tumhare sanskar theek nahin hai.” He naturally hams his way through the film.
The strangest part of the film is its tacit misogyny. Apart from the heroine and her consciously cute little sister, there are no female characters in the plot. This is perhaps an indication of the kind of audience the film is expected to command.
One of the film’s weakest links is its music score. Daboo Malik’s tunes are a watery mishmash of Anu Malik and Nadeem-Shravan. The songs, shot in sandy stark locations invoking a feeling of parched passion, induce a massive exodus out of the theatres, which isn’t a good sign at all.
Strangely though the film’s protagonist is named Ajay the soundtrack repeatedly invokes Islamic chants and images in his presence. And when the devout Muslim gangster Munna (Sanjay Dutt) raises his fist in a fight we see the Hindu sacred thread tied around his wrist.
Secularism survives. But the future formal formulized mainstream cinema seems far less secure. The boy-meets-girl conventions have clearly reached saturation point. Efforts are made to spruce it up with alien thrills like soccer on Juhu beach and a character in drag named Bobby who hangs around with the campus guys and proudly declares, “I’m gay and I’m happy.” That’s more than can be said about the heterosexual protagonists of the film . Sohail Khan and Sameera Reddy wear perpetual frowns probably wondering if they have a bright future ahead. Unlike Bobby they are neither gay nor happy.
