Bollywood For Beginners: Parts 14-16
Note: This series was originally posted to my Bollywood blogspot blog and represents the cumulation of the wisdom of a decade or so spent in the Bollywood trenches. It would have last been edited in about 2014.
Bollywood for Beginners 14-16
Know Your Heroes:
The Three Khans
To understand any Bollywood film from the last twenty-five years you need to understand the Three Khans. These three men have dominated both the box office and audience’s hearts since the late 1980s and continue to do so today to an extent that’s almost impossible for non-Bollywood viewers to understand. No real challenger has emerged to topple them from their thrones, although the Khans must inevitably fall as all heroes do.
Everybody has a favorite Khan. Every up and coming actor gets asked,“Who is your favorite Khan?” with the result picked apart for clues to his personality. Established heroines still aim to collect films with all Three Khans, scoring the elusive Khan Hat Trick. And uniting them all within the same film has been a Bollywood pipe dream for almost as long as the three have topped the box office. With only a handful of exceptions, the biggest, most successful film each year since 1988 has starred one of the Three Khans.
A film is just a film but a Khan film is an Event.
Khan #1: SALMAN KHAN
In the 1980s, Bollywood was full of sex and violence. With the VCR and television keeping “respectable” middle-class families at home, Bollywood filmmakers amped up the more sensational and crass aspects of their films to keep their remaining audience--mostly single men looking for a good time--happy. Films like the bloody Hukumat (“Evil Rule,” the top grossing film of 1987), which starred the then 52-year old Dharmendra as a cop out for revenge, were the order of the day.
Enter the young Salman Khan.
Striding onto the screen (and into many young ladies’ hearts) as “Prem,” the sweet, chocolate hero of Maine Pyar Kiya (“I Fell in Love,” 1989), Salman was a like a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stagnant industry. The youthful romance, directed by the youthful 24-year old Sooraj Barjatya, was a smash hit and Salman became an instant star. The industry didn’t change overnight but Maine Pyar Kiya wasn’t an outlier, it was a warning shot, signaling a trend towards lighter, more family-friendly fare. And by the time the two reunited in 1994 for Sooraj’s second film Hum Aapke Hain... Kaun! (“Who are you to me?”)--an epic three and a half hours of wedding drama featuring fourteen songs and one very cute dog--demand for the film was so intense, it’s credited with single-handedly dragging middle class families away from the television and back into theaters.
Beginning with his very first solo lead in Maine Pyar Kiya, Sallu-bhai (as he is known to his many fans) has been a reliable barometer of where the mood is for popular film. He’s topped the box office in romances, silly comedies, slick yuppie films, and--coming full circle--he’s overseen the masala revival. Salman isn’t technically a great actor but what he lacks in range he makes up for in pure charisma and his surprisingly adaptable hero persona has remained the slightly-naughty-on-the-outside, completely-sweet-on-the-inside Prem. Although these days no Salman Khan film is complete without at least one scene featuring him shirtless, behind his famously muscular physique beats a pure heart. Salman can throw punches, land a joke, camp it up with his co-stars, and chastely romance a leading lady. He will never kiss or curse in his films. He has no patience with the vapid or stupid personalities cluttering Bollywood red carpets and no interest in chasing critical acclaim through art house cinema, the global market, and/or Hollywood. Salman makes films for two reasons: to earn money and to please his fans.
From time to time, Salman’s tempestuous personal life has overshadowed his film work. Unusually for a Bollywood hero, he has never married and instead dates a string of gorgeous actresses, much like George Clooney. It has been rumored that Salman has a violent temper and enjoys his whiskey a bit too much. In 2003, actor Vivek Oberoi even held a press conference accusing Salman of being violent with Salman’s ex-girlfriend, Vivek’s then-girlfriend actress Aishwarya Rai. (For what it’s worth, Aishwarya never confirmed anything and is now happily married to neither man; Vivek Oberoi’s career has yet to recover.) Salman has also had two major brushes with the law: illegal hunting in 1998 and a fatal drunk driving incident in 2002. He did serve some jail time in 2006 for the hunting and charges had been dropped in the drunk driving case but thanks to India’s notoriously slow court system, both cases linger on.
Salman comes from an industry family--he’s the son of the legendary Bollywood screenwriter Salim Khan and Helen, the H Bomb, is his stepmother--and his choice of films very much reflects this, often doing a film for no other reason than to help out a friend or relative in the industry. Because Salman’s reasoning for doing a film may be anywhere from “the bills are due,” “I want to hang out with my brothers,” or “this sounds fun” his filmography is much more varied in quality than the other Two Khans and his career has seen more ups and downs. Some of his riskier films have become cult classics but others are among the worst Bollywood has to offer. A Salman film is always a gamble.
Newcomers to Salman might find these films a good place to dive in:
Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999)--A fresh faced Salman plays a half-Italian music student who comes to India to study with a great master but trouble arises when he falls for the master’s daughter (Aishwarya Rai). The melodrama and romance are over-the-top in the best Bollywood way, the music is wonderful, and every frame is packed with the gorgeous visuals that are the hallmark of director Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
Jann-e-Mann (2006)--An older Salman plays a failed actor trying to save his marriage in this modern day fairytale. The film was a flop when it was released but has become a cult classic. The film has wry sense of humor and a taste for the bizarre--Salman appears dressed as Marilyn Monroe at one point--and it is done in the “magical realism” style, which should make the songs easier for the viewer unused to the format to accept.
Dabangg (2010)--Salman famously had to grow a moustache for his role as a cop who steals from the rich… and keeps it for himself. This village-set masala film successfully merges the new aesthetics of ‘realism’ with the time honored revenge narrative and was a hit with both the classes and the masses.
Khan #2: SHAHRUKH KHAN
Shahrukh Khan is the both the easiest and most difficult of the Three Khans to fully understand. Now known as the Badshah of Bollywood (King of Bollywood), Shahrukh was a no-name Delhi boy on a television soap opera when he got his big break. Instead of a big hero’s launch, Shahrukh began his film career quietly, as a secondary hero, playing the young, high-strung foil to a fading hero in Deewana (“Crazy,” 1992). Because he didn’t have a film family backing him, the road to being a superstar took longer for the Badshah. He kicked around in some typical early 1990s two-hero potboilers and may have been consigned to the B-movie ghetto with the other non-star sons if something magical hadn’t happened: two films featuring two very magnetic antihero performances from Shahrukh released within a month of each other--Baazigar in November of 1993 and Darr in December of 1993. Suddenly, everybody knew the name Shahrukh Khan. Shahrukh was passionate. Shahrukh was dangerous. Shahrukh was slightly unhinged. With his piercing stare and sharp smile, you could never be sure if was going to burst into song or hold the heroine hostage in his own private dungeon.
And then came the film that changed everything: Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (“The Braveheart Takes the Bride,” 1995). Shahrukh plays Raj Malhotra, a carefree, wealthy party boy born and raised in London. While on a train journey through Switzerland, he falls for fellow London-ite Simran and playfully teases her until she falls in love right back. In an American film that might be the end of it but this being a Bollywood film, however, the falling-in-love is just the first act. The real trouble is that Simran is from a very traditional family and her father has already promised her hand in marriage to another man and he’s not about to break that promise for some floppy haired party boy. Simran is shipped off to the Punjab for her wedding. If Raj wants to marry her, he must follow and prove just how worthy he is.
To say that DDLJ (as Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge is almost universally known) was a massive hit is an understatement. The film has penetrated the culture as deeply as Star Wars has in America. Everybody has seen DDLJ except a handful of people living under a rock but even they know all the lines and characters and references because it’s impossible not to. There is a theater in Mumbai that has been screening the DDLJ since its release 20 years ago and people still come out to see it and recite the lines along with the film. And it wasn’t just a hit in India, it also spoke to young second-generation South Asians all across the globe, capturing their hopes and dreams and fears instead of those of the older generation.
Shahrukh got swept along in the DDLJ hysteria and became inexorably tied to Raj. His dangerous side was hidden away and the loverboy, with his watery eyes and trembling lip, took over. Shahrukh ended up playing a whole slew of “Raj” type characters, charismatic yuppies whose primary goal in life was whisk their lady-loves off to the Swiss Alps for a romantic duet or two. And though he’s tried to break the image every few years, no matter how successful or well-received these films are, he can’t seem to shake the loverboy tag and, for this viewer anyways, his romancing has gained a brittle, frustrated edge in recent years.
Though he claims the title of Badshaah of Bollywood, Shahrukh has never had the box office power of Salman or Aamir but he does have a very devoted fanbase, especially among the South Asian diaspora, and a talent for staying the spotlight. Of the Three Khans, Shahrukh has the closest relationship with the press but he’s also the least candid. Where Salman will say exactly what he means in five words or less, Shahrukh will give you five paragraphs of wit that reveal nothing at all. And despite his great success, Shahrukh still hustles like the struggler he was: hobnobbing with wealthy industrialists, putting on live concerts, hosting awards shows, doing television, and even performing at the occasional wedding. And far more than the other two Khans, Shahrukh seems keenly aware of his superstar image and the act that goes into maintaining it.
Bearing in mind that Shahrukh’s filmography is very heavy on romances, newcomers to Shahrukh Khan might find these films a good place to dive in:
Asoka (2001)--Although this film flopped at the box office, it shouldn’t be discounted. Shahrukh plays King Asoka, who was instrumental in spreading Buddhism around India. The ancient setting and epic nature of the film should make it a treat for those just dipping their toes into Bollywood.
Veer-Zaara (2004)--Highlighting the awful divide between Pakistan and India, Shahrukh plays an Indian military man tragically separated from his Pakistani love.
Om Shanti Om (2007)--This reincarnation story is both the apex of Shahrukh’s loverboy persona and a nostalgic look at Bollywood of the 1970s. Brightly colored, over-the-top, and incredibly cheeky there’s a lot to enjoy even if you don’t know all the references to yesteryear films.
And just a small warning on DDLJ: the film is extremely melodramatic, sentimental, and tied to the Indian psyche of a certain era. The acting is stylized, the production values are not great compared with today’s films, and it is a long film packed with very culturally specific references. I wouldn’t recommend seeing this as one of your first Bollywood films unless you really, really, really love sappy love-at-first-sight romances and/or films where the man has to “win” his bride. I do not.
I get a lot of flack for this but I don’t particularly like DDLJ, although I do appreciate that it’s beloved by probably very literally a billion people. And I know it always gets recommended in those “Bollywood films you MUST see” lists but I suspect the people putting those lists together are either looking at a) it’s popularity, if they are non-Indian and don’t really know much about Bollywood or b) if they are Indian, their own love of the film from when they saw it when they were 15.
Khan #3: AAMIR KHAN
Although Aamir Khan debuted first among the Three Khans, I saved him for last because the 2000s--when he became New Aamir--have really been his decade. Aamir is known as The Perfectionist because dedicates himself completely to every project he does and he demands the results be… perfect. Of the three Khans, Aamir is the one who most feels the weight of social responsibility. He has a message and he’s not afraid to use his hero status to spread it. Aamir makes mainstream films that both entertain and touch on serious issues in people lives and the people love him for it.
Aamir, like Salman, is an industry son and was initially launched as a romantic hero. But while Salman made his debut in a heart-warming teen romance, Aamir debuted in a film based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with the unambiguous title Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (“From One Tragedy to the Next,” 1988). Though he’s still a bit raw in his debut, Aamir’s gravitational pull is evident. He can bend whole scenes in his direction, with the force of his eyes alone. Aamir is intense. And considering Aamir has died more often than any other hero in recent times, his first role as Raj, the guitar-strumming boy who falls in love with a girl from a rival family, has turned out to be oddly prophetic.
The light-hearted 1990s were not an easy fit for Aamir, who never seemed quite as comfortable with the “let’s be friends” dialogues that Salman and Shahrukh delivered with aplomb. Even in Aamir’s silliest roles--i.e. a huckster pretending to be an amnesiac in order to marry a rich heiress--one senses the weltschmerz running just under the surface. But Aamir continued to make the kinds of films everybody else was making until 2000, which is when Mela (“Festival”) was released to intensely negative reactions. The soggy romance about a girl running away from home and the truck driver who picks her up wasn’t just bad, it was career ending bad. (Literally career-ending. Heroine Twinkle Khanna got married soon after it came out and started up an interior design business.) Aamir decided things had to change. He had clout, he had talent, and he had money so why was he making films like Mela?
2001 saw the birth of New Aamir and he brought with him two films that would set the template for everything else to follow: Lagaan (“Tax”) and Dil Chahta Hai (“The Heart Wants”). Lagaan, only the second Indian film ever nominated for the foreign language Oscar, is an epic historical film that follows the journey of a small village as it unites to take on the English in a high stakes game of cricket. The film combined Bollywood storytelling with a more realistic style of filmmaking, most notably the use of sync sound (where the sound is recorded on set as the actors say their lines) instead of dubbing (where the sound is recorded much later), which is still standard on most Bollywood film sets. Dil Chahta Hai, on the other hand, used Bollywood craft to tell a very modern story of three college friends who are finding their place in the world. Directed by a young man not far out of college himself, Dil Chahta Hai still has a breezy, youthful feeling more than ten years later.
Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai broke the monopoly on the increasingly claustrophobic 1990s Bollywood template and opened some space in the box office for films that looked beyond family drama to the wider world, while still keeping that special, wonderful brand of unironic Bollywood emotion fully intact. The patriotism of the new breed of films was more complex; romance was more grown-up; concerns extended beyond the immediate family. Like Salman with Maine Pyar Kiya in 1988, change didn’t happen overnight but it was signaled with these two films. And this time Aamir Khan was at the forefront of it all.
While Aamir is still making interesting films, in 2012 he turned his attention to television. Sensing a societal need for frank discussion of very difficult issues, Aamir created and hosted a short made-for-television series called Satyamev Jayate (“The Truth Alone Prevails”) in which he brought subjects like child abuse and the dangers of using pesticides to a wide audience.
The Perfectionist has not had a perfect private life but when Aamir’s name pops up in news reports it is usually for a biting remark made at the expense of one of his colleagues--generally somebody who has not lived up to The Perfectionist’s exacting standards--rather than any drunken brawls or legal troubles. Perhaps the only personal drama to make the gossip pages was when Aamir divorced his first wife, with whom he has two children. But in a classic Aamir Khan style, he didn’t re-marry a supermodel or a hot bimbo but the assistant director to Lagaan, a bright young woman named Kiran Rao, who has just directed her (well received) first feature film, Dhobi Ghat.
Aamir is known for transforming himself completely for a role: bulking up, slimming down, getting fat, growing a moustache, shaving his head, and “freshening” his face as needed. You never quite know what you’re getting into when you put on an Aamir Khan film but it will almost definitely be worth watching, especially post 2001. Here are some good films to begin with:
3 Idiots (2009)--This film looks at modern life through the eyes of three friends in engineering school. It will run you through the full gamut of emotions in true masala style, broken only by the occasional groan-inducing joke. 3 Idiots broke every box office record there is in Mumbai and has also become something of a hit across most of East Asia.
Lagaan (2001)--You might need to spread this one out over two days due to the length but it is mandatory viewing for aspiring Bollywood fans. Aamir Khan stars as Bhuvan, a village youth who rallies his village together to defeat the English on the only fair playing field--the cricket pitch. Rachel Shelley (The L Word) and Paul Blackthorne (24) also star.
Rangeela (1995)--One of the very first Bollywood films that I ever saw and a long-time favorite. Aamir Khan stars as Munna, a good-hearted goonda (thug) who is head-over-heels in love with his aspiring actress neighbor. The film is lighthearted, features great music from Oscar-winner A.R. Rahman, and gives a peek behind the scenes of Bollywood film shoots.