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Baabul (2006) Director: Ravi Chopra Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Rani Mukherjee, Salman Khan, John Abraham, Hema Malini, Om Puri Time: 169 min. Hindi with English subtitles Rating: |
I approached Baabul with absolute minimum expectations, and even those expectations were far too high for this train wreck for a movie, but as with any disaster, I just couldn’t look away from the screen because I couldn’t believe how appalling it was.
The first 20 minutes or so are nearly unwatchable. Boy-child Avinash (Khan, who couldn’t even behave mature enough to be a man-child) returns to India from the US, takes a high-level management position in his father’s company, and instantly falls in love with the nondescript Millie/Malvika (Mukherjee). After some childish romantic trauma, they marry, have a geeky kid, and life seems perfect … until Avinash does himself in in classic Meet Joe Black fashion.
Here the story shifts into lecture mode as Avinash’s father (Bachchan) works to make his inconsolable daughter-in-law happy again by encouraging her to enter into a relationship with her childhood friend Rajat (Abraham). Here the film becomes a social commentary about widowhood in India (and does it in much more direct way than Water did). But even this attempt to be culturally forward thinking can’t save Baabul.
Because Baabul is so bad on so many levels, it’s really hard to identify the worst aspect of this film: the stupid dialogs, the uninspired acting, the unmemorable songs, the pandering to simplistic social myths, or the contradictory enculturation messages.
The most obvious problem with this film is the blatantly ridiculous script. When any of the male characters wants to make a dramatic point (only the males because the female characters aren’t independent or wise enough to have an intelligent thought), he suddenly speaks in long-winded soliloquies punctuated with obtuse metaphors that sound compellingly archaic.
Even the “normal” dialogues are dreadful. When Avinash proposes to Millie, he falls to one knee and utters in English with all sincerity, “Marry me, dude,” which appeared inexplicably in the subtitles as “Marry me, babe.” (No, I’m not making this up.) Even “Arre, mujse shaadi karogi, yaar” wouldn’t have been so incredibly laughable.
But it’s not surprising that Khan as Avinash speaks such comedic lines in what purports to be a family drama because throughout the film his character seems to have sprung from some Priyadarshan slapstick comedy. Khan smirks and grins impishly even in the most serious scenes as if he is only capable of acting like a clown.
The rest of the cast cannot display their acting skills because they are hampered with one-dimensional characters. Rani Mukherjee can only smile or sob because Millie has been written with all of the vitality and depth of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (of comic strip fame). John Abraham is forced to re-enact scenes and dialogues that Khan had already trampled into the ground in the first half of the movie. (I wondered if John looked so teary eyed because the script demanded him to look that way or if he was teary eyed because he was trapped in this film.) Hema Malini looked splendidly elegant, but elegance can’t carry a flatly conceived character.
Only Amitabh Bachchan survives the film well because his on-screen charisma gives some force to his otherwise preachy, stilted lines. But Baalbul is clearly Bachchan’s vehicle because the script emphasizes the power and wisdom of the father of the household over the actual plot, which revolves around the tepid love triangle between Avinash, Millie, and Rajat.
Of course, the adoring view on patriarchy fits well with the other social myths and enculturation that infuse Baabul. The dramatic tension of the love triangle is fueled by the immature (and unrealistic) social belief that you can only love once.
But strangely, the enculturation messages in Baabul are conflicting and hypocritical. It’s acceptable for widows to remarry, but wives must be subservient to their husbands. It’s all right for widows to wear colors other than white, but the firstborn child must be a son. A widow can be allowed to have a life after her husband dies, but a wife must always observe karva chauth and fast for her husband to prove her eternal devotion. Despite its forward thinking view of widows, the film buries women in a grave of servitude and patriarchy.
By promoting such messages, Baabul seems more like a Bollywood film from a few decades ago than a modern piece of filmmaking. But perhaps that was director Chopra’s goal—to promote good Indian family values as a way of resisting Westernization. That might explain why in the song-and-dance sequences all of the demure, circumspectly dressed women are Indian and all of the sexually charged, half-naked women are white.
Whatever the intentions of the filmmakers, Baabul is better left in a bygone era. It certainly doesn’t belong in a modern cinema hall, and modern audiences shouldn’t be fed such Baabulshit.
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