Mar 20, 2007 04:06 PM
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Pls Alvida kaho- to stories of stereotyped men and women in the land of bollywood!!!
Why I wrote this review: Chilling at home on Sunday night, I was trying to two-time KANK with Koffee with Karan, (ok, I DO have a life, but sometimes, we have periods of lull ;-) ) Saw the STARK diff between Mira Nair/ Tabu‘s league of cinema and K-Jo’s pseudo -tell the truth-of the pseudo- rich and gaiety-so called modern society cinema… Ironically KANK- a movie about modern r'ships is one of the biggest hits of 2006. That’s what triggered this write-up!!
Story 1- “Extremely rich” event manager abhishek bacchan living in NYC married to a seemingly simpleton rani mukherjee who wears all kinds of designer outfits every day to teach kids in school. (no it aint a school of fashion). Abhishek is a guy every woman will fall for instantly (where are all these men??)and is madly in love with rani (love is strangely blind) and she agrees to married him only as she is ehsaan-ke-bojh-tale (no u perverts! Its not ehsaan from ehsaan-shakar-loy). She doesn’t love him (abhishek, not ehsaan! Focus focus!) as she has a complicated mind of her own (which u shall hopelessly TRY to figure out in course of the movie, all in painful vain). And hence continues their sex-less, emotion-less, baccha-less marriage.
Story 2-On the other side of the same town you got an “extremely rich” preity zinta working as a top exec of some fashion magazine (you can understand why she wears fashionable designer clothes to work, but whats with the layyyyers and layyyyers of pancake?) She’s gutsy, fearless, having a straight-forward uncomplicated mind of her own, has done very well in life professionally, has a son, and wears the (designer) pants in the house. Reason for unhappy marriage? Her hubby Mr SRK is has transformed from being a high-achiever in sports to a disgruntled, impatient lallu-pallu coach for kiddos due to leg injury.
The irony of the story is that instead of priety and abhishek falling for each other, we have SRK & rani doing it. Their respective spouses being insensitive and unsupportive are obviously a figment of their baseless banal imagination and perhaps that’s what they find common in each other. I am not appalled by the message that movie is “trying” to convey (“ex-mat-affairs is a reality”) but more-so with the other underlying messages that are more stark naked.
(1) Priety’s sob story: Successful woman = rotten marriage.
Why bring this up & highlight it when in fact K-Jo’s “attempting” to show the modern views about marriage. Why can Indian film makers come up with a fresh story of how a woman makes a successful marriage + successful career work? Why all these done to death clichés?
(2) SRK’s sob story: Men fall for stereotyped women who have less ambition and all the time in the world for their men.
SRK obviously falls for rani as she’s a lesser mortal (teaching kids you see, how much will she achieve in that –PLUS she has all the time in the world for him!).Also, his insecurity is also displayed when he has a fit of rage when he thinks preity’s seeing abhishek. Why can’t they for once shun this glorified insecurity that men posses about their women?
(3) Abhishek’s sob story: Warm generous husband = wife taking you for granted
C’mon abhishek’s the “perfect Mr right”!! (Again, where are all these men??) – isn’t every girl wanting to be with a man like him? Why on earth will a woman run away from him? I mean she isn’t gay or exactly frigid (she does sleep with SRK), so what exactly is the problem? Why give an impression that women are never satisfied?
(4) Rani’s sob story: Women= clueless/ confused mortals
Rani’s character- doesn’t quite know her mind- blames abhishek ‘not discussing their joys and sorrows’ (EH?). Why show women in poor light? Showing that they’re unsatisfied, confused about their life, and although they may take a stance of being a sacrificing woman- don’t stick to the stance they’ve taken, & likely to back out from their commitments. Also, although she seems to like shahrukh, she doesn’t exactly seem 100% SURE about it (just relieved to get rid of abhishek!!!)
Summary of Sob + sob + sob + sob =Women don’t know their minds, IF they do, their husbands run away, likewise, men don’t know how to react to successful wives, IF at all they are good husbands, their wives get bored, fed up and run away!!!
We aren’t all practical people, we do understand soulful/pitiful/spiteful emotions of the heart. We love watching love stories working against all odds and will support all the wrong-doings done by our fave characters, but what can we do when no logic is backed with lack of emotional content?
It is far easy to understand why Brad Pitt left Jeniffer Anistan. Why Langda tyagi conspired against Omkara, or why Irfan Patel/Tabu conspired against Pankaj Kapoor in Maqbool, inspite of their twisted dark minds. Showing the characters melt into tears in KANK just aggravates your irritation to a heightened degree- cuz you JUST DON’T GET IT!
The sad part is whatever the flaws of the script may be; we got a whopping 291+ reviews in MS alone (mine being the 292th I guess), with an overall rating of 3 stars. K-Jo’s like Madam Ekta Kapoor, love em, hate em, but you can still look up to them as they have an acute business sense & DO KNOW HOW TO MAKE BIG MONEY!
PS- I’ve skipped talking about aspects like cinematography, fashion/clothing, attempts made by the stars of the movie as I was just trying to focus on the main theme.
