Reading all the early reviews and social media posts about Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM), I was intrigued and disappointed that Pakistanis were denied the right to watch it on the big screen. The only Bollywood films I’ve ever watched in a cinema are Khoobsurat and Kapoor & Sons and I was definitely going to see ADHM because, yes, Fawad Khan’s in it.
LETTERtotheeditor
Lahore: Spoiler Alert ahead…
Reading all the early reviews and social media posts about Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM), I was intrigued and disappointed that Pakistanis were denied the right to watch it on the big screen. The only Bollywood films I’ve ever watched in a cinema are Khoobsurat and Kapoor & Sons and I was definitely going to see ADHM because, yes, Fawad Khan’s in it. I couldn’t resist all the oohs and aahs I was hearing about Fawad’s cameo or the claims that Karan Johar has matured and improved as a writer-director and that it’s the dawn of a new age in Indian cinema. Right.
I caved and accessed the pirated version online like everyone else in Pakistan. Yes, that’s what happens when you ban legal content. I watched the film agape almost throughout. No, that’s not a compliment. I’m stumped as to what on earth everyone is talking about? ADHM’s characters and narrative offer nothing new so the gushing and the heaps of praise bestowed on the film are beyond me.
After watching Kapoor and Sons, I assumed that Dharma Productions and with it Karan Johar must have evolved at least a little but ADHM brings us back to square one. These characters just exist in 2016 with all the technology, gadgets and sexual liberation but make no mistake, they’re all what our parents’ generation grew up watching. A rotten dish served in fancy packaging.
Ranbir Kapoor plays the centuries old entitled, patriarchal male who is super rich (‘private Jet ameer) and has a Hindi films’ stereotypical ‘bimbo’ gold digger girlfriend. Of course. How else would you compare and like the actual ‘heroine’ who’s opposite of all that. The way Anushka Sharma as Alizeh treats her is just baffling. It’s mean, insulting, misogynist and sexist to the core but hey, that’s not what the audience is supposed to feel for the ‘girlfriend character’ in Hindi cinema. Just shut up and hate her, cheer when she’s finally out of the picture. Speaking of Anushka Sharma, she plays another old as hills character, dubbed by Hollywood as the ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’. Bollywood either has the proverbial ‘sati savitris‘ or shokh and chulbuli, crazy Alizehs. Every Bollywood heroine from every era has played this role. Yes, Sharma has played the character very well and her performance is the only saving grace of the film but please stop saying that her character is ‘refreshing’ and unlike most Indian heroines. It’s not.
Alizeh is not the problem here, though. It’s Ayan. Or should we say Karan Johar, the writer? In this day and age when ancient patriarchal narratives, characters and stories are being called out and questioned around the world, such a character and a whole movie built around his entitled whining is just mind boggling.
Ayan meets and soon falls in love with Alizeh, who hasn’t gotten over her ex Ali and considers Ayan only a friend. Lo and behold! Ayan’s world comes crashing down! How is this even possible?? Why on earth doesn’t she love him back? He’s obviously a perfect catch so why? Just how? Wonders Ayan and with him 99 per cent of the viewers who’re gushing about the film and feeling his ‘pain’. The biggest discussion and the key word being thrown around is ‘Friend Zone’, the ultimate tragedy for men whose ‘objects’ of desire and affection don’t respond as they want them to.
Has anyone ever broken it to them that complaining about friend zoning perpetuates rape culture? It also perpetuates the horrible precedent that women exist only for men’s romantic and sexual pleasure and whenever a man falls in love with a woman, he is automatically entitled to romance/love /sex from her. Regardless of her interest, desire or consent because, as we’ve been taught all our lives, good girls from societies like ours don’t have any of the above emotions and rights.
Ayan throws tantrums throughout the movie because of being ‘deprived’ of Alizeh’s love that he (and the writer) is 100 per cent convinced that he and only he deserves. He is aggressive and borderline abusive to her on several occasions because of it, even when (spoiler alert) Alizeh is (spoiler alert) dying of cancer and lying in bed exhausted. Yes, he tries to kiss a cancer patient without asking (an alien concept, I know) and when she says no, of course he’s pissed and starts shouting and throwing things around. Because no doesn’t mean no in Bollywood. Of course.
I was scared that we’ll have Alizeh confessing to being in love with Ayan before dying and that she was just trying to protect him from the pain of losing her but thankfully we’re were spared at least one filmi stereotype. Kudos for letting the woman stick to her guns till the end but the character we’re supposed to sympathise with and whose ‘journey’ in to a Sufi rock star (*groan*) we’re witnessing, couldn’t be more wrong and condemn worthy. It’s men like Ayan who (in extreme cases) end up abusing, beating, throwing acid on and killing women who don’t reciprocate their desires exactly how they want them to. No, this is not an exaggeration or taking things too seriously, this is a fact.
Filmmakers, writers and directors in our part of the world need to catch up fast on their lessons in how NOT to portray a ‘hero’ and especially what constitutes love and affection. Information is available and handy on any and everything under the sun like never before to our generation so why this insistence on staying a painfully ignorant cave man? There’s no excuse for it anymore and someone like Karan Johar can’t claim to be Indian cinema’s next iconic film maker without genuinely evolving and adopting the ideals that most women around the world are waiting for most men to get introduced to.
