Vivah (or Vivaah): A very simple fairytale
Apr. 9th, 2007 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieI have fallen in love with a very unfashionable movie: Vivaah.
Vivaah is a sweet, charming, very unpretentious Bollywood movie about two youngsters (Shahid Kapoor and Amrita Rao, both adorable here) who slowly fall in love with each other during the engagement for their arranged marriage, and said love overcomes some last minute hardships.
It’s a totally unfashionable movie to love, and actually even far from what I normally would go gaga over: there are no villains. There is not much melodrama even. There are a bunch of nice people, rather old-fashioned in their out-look, who go on with their lives and celebrations. The youngsters both voluntarily agree to the arranged marriage, and get to know each other and fall in love. There is no angsty lover lurking in the wings for a dramatic wedding denoument, to take the bride away. There are no evil relatives (Amrita’s aunt is cranky at her being prettier than her own daughter, but she hardly boils her in oil).
So why do I love it? It’s pretty, it’s sweet, it’s a traditional utopia of sorts, and sometimes I just want a fairytale, a bit of sweet unrealistic cinematic happiness, with adorable couples, and colorful dancing, and danger averted thrown in.
Perhaps significantly, Vivaah is by the rather old-fashioned fimmater Sooraj Barjatya, who revolutionized Bolly industry with his 1994 super hit Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, which its detractors (and I am one of them) labelled a three-hour-long wedding video, where nothing happens, but whose crazy blockbuster status led the shift to less violent, more romantic and family-oriented Bollywood fare. But since then, SB, even though his movies have done well, has been left in the dust, while the screen is ruled by the Westernized, much hipper spiritual descendants of him. (Karan Johar is very much SB’s disciple in his love of grand large happy families, festivals, etc, but he is like the young stylish nephew of the stodgy uncle: Western locales, cool melodrama, tongue-in-cheek humor). Interestingly, Vivaah was a huge hit last year, but most of its money came from B & C centers in India (smaller towns) as opposed to being popular with the hip urban multiplex crowd. And it was sort of left out of poppy awards too…
Ah well.
Just look at the pretty and tell me you don’t want to give the cuteness a try:
Vivaah is a sweet, charming, very unpretentious Bollywood movie about two youngsters (Shahid Kapoor and Amrita Rao, both adorable here) who slowly fall in love with each other during the engagement for their arranged marriage, and said love overcomes some last minute hardships.
It’s a totally unfashionable movie to love, and actually even far from what I normally would go gaga over: there are no villains. There is not much melodrama even. There are a bunch of nice people, rather old-fashioned in their out-look, who go on with their lives and celebrations. The youngsters both voluntarily agree to the arranged marriage, and get to know each other and fall in love. There is no angsty lover lurking in the wings for a dramatic wedding denoument, to take the bride away. There are no evil relatives (Amrita’s aunt is cranky at her being prettier than her own daughter, but she hardly boils her in oil).
So why do I love it? It’s pretty, it’s sweet, it’s a traditional utopia of sorts, and sometimes I just want a fairytale, a bit of sweet unrealistic cinematic happiness, with adorable couples, and colorful dancing, and danger averted thrown in.
Perhaps significantly, Vivaah is by the rather old-fashioned fimmater Sooraj Barjatya, who revolutionized Bolly industry with his 1994 super hit Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, which its detractors (and I am one of them) labelled a three-hour-long wedding video, where nothing happens, but whose crazy blockbuster status led the shift to less violent, more romantic and family-oriented Bollywood fare. But since then, SB, even though his movies have done well, has been left in the dust, while the screen is ruled by the Westernized, much hipper spiritual descendants of him. (Karan Johar is very much SB’s disciple in his love of grand large happy families, festivals, etc, but he is like the young stylish nephew of the stodgy uncle: Western locales, cool melodrama, tongue-in-cheek humor). Interestingly, Vivaah was a huge hit last year, but most of its money came from B & C centers in India (smaller towns) as opposed to being popular with the hip urban multiplex crowd. And it was sort of left out of poppy awards too…
Ah well.
Just look at the pretty and tell me you don’t want to give the cuteness a try:
