A new restraint may be creeping into Bollywood, if movies like Parineeta are any indication. This may be good news for those who think it's high time the Indian film industry "grew-up," but for anyone who likes the pretty soap opera fluff Bollywood has been churning out for decades, who finds it a reasonable substitute for real Hollywood melodrama, which of course no longer exists, this may not be a welcome development. Some may laugh at perfectly-timed, punctuative thunder-claps (always going off at particularly dramatic moments in the story), might think them quaint, but those who appreciate a good overwrought extravaganza, filled with silly devices, absurdly convenient turns-of-plot and hammy histrionics, can only be disheartened at this apparent rejection of classic form in favor of a more modern, less over-the-top approach.
Of course "restraint" is a relative term; Parineeta may be less hysterical, less willing to aim for the melodramatic moon than Bollywood movies have traditionally been, but it still has its cornball charms. The plot, culled from a famed novel by Saratchandra Chatterjee, is classic Bollywood: Shekhar (Saif Ali Khan) and Lolita (Vidya Balan) have been sweethearts since childhood, he living with his wealthy parents and she with her adoptive middle-class family next door. A dark cloud hangs over their budding romance in the form of a family debt; Lolita's adoptive father Gurucharan (Achyut Potdar) owes Shekhar's father, ruthless business-man Nabin Roy (Sabyasachi Chakravarthy), money, and if the debt isn't paid Gurucharan's lavish ancestral home will be taken away and turned into a hotel. Help arrives in the form of Girish Babu (Sanjay Dutt), a wealthy relative of a family friend, who agrees to pay the debt, presumably in return for Lolita's hand in marriage; this inflames Shekhar's jealousies, pushing him closer to the woman, Gayatri (Aishwarya Rai look-alike Diya Mirza), chosen for him by his family over the undesirable Lolita. It's the kind of situation that would easily resolve itself if the characters just slowed down and thought about things, but of course, in Bollywood, rash over-reaction is the order of the day. There's nothing more predictable than this kind of melodramatic plot, and of course that is the entire point. One doesn't watch Wile E. Coyote chase the Road Runner hoping that, for once, Wile E. WON'T fall off the cliff; one EXPECTS him to fall off the cliff, WANTS him to fall off the cliff. And one watches a film like Parineeta wanting, indeed expecting, more-or-less the same thing, people flying over figurative cliffs in the name of love, pride and family honor.
The elements are all there - the romance between people from different classes, the misunderstandings leading to crazed, self-destructive acts, the family loyalties in whose name one's desires must be set aside - but the heat isn't turned all the way up, the movie never achieves the level of hysteria one has become accustomed to. Director Pradeep Sarkar remains faithful to the conventions of Indian melodrama while demonstrating a certain unwillingness to cut things all the way loose. The problem with Parineeta is that we halfway believe what we're seeing; the movie veers a little too close to actual psychological realism for it to work as a full-on musical soap opera in the great Bollywood tradition. There's nothing more toxic to melodrama than naturalism; what killed the Hollywood soap opera wasn't changing audience tastes but changing directorial and acting ones, and the same thing may be happening in India now. When Hollywood threw off the old-fashioned theatricality and started striving for "honesty" and "truth," that was when the classic dramatic forms, which had sustained the industry from the days of Griffith on through Sirk, started falling by the wayside. You can't buy melodrama if the actors playing it aren't willing to stretch toward caricature, and if the directors staging it aren't willing to let it all hang out. The new directors, like Sarkar, seem to be hedging their bets; they want to play to the galleries, but may have begun thinking that the old Bollywood forms are out-moded, that what once made for great spectacle is now corny, and that the only way to protect themselves is by holding back. Bollywood directors, and young actors like Saif Ali Khan, may be ready for more realistic, daring material, but the stories they're getting are the same old fluff, and the only choice they have is to compromise, to play the game the same way it's always been played but without the same gusto, the same commitment. The result is something that looks like Bollywood and sometimes feels like Bollywood, but just seems watered-down.
There are things to enjoy about Parineeta even if it doesn't live up to the usual Bollywood standard. There's a marvelous performance by the understatedly commanding Sanjay Dutt as Girish, the classic good guy stuck in an uncomfortable position (the guy the girl should love but doesn't). There's a fabulous musical number set in a 1960s nightclub featuring the sultry Rekha (it's the only memorable number in the movie; Sarkar also seems less-than-enthused about musical staging, which seems almost sacrilegious). There's the assurance of Saif Ali Khan as the romantic lead, the musician Shekhar, and there's the moist-eyed beauty of Vidya Balan as Lolita the orphan girl. One wishes it all came together better, was pushed through with a little more force, a little more enthusiasm. Parineeta is accomplished but tame.
Of course "restraint" is a relative term; Parineeta may be less hysterical, less willing to aim for the melodramatic moon than Bollywood movies have traditionally been, but it still has its cornball charms. The plot, culled from a famed novel by Saratchandra Chatterjee, is classic Bollywood: Shekhar (Saif Ali Khan) and Lolita (Vidya Balan) have been sweethearts since childhood, he living with his wealthy parents and she with her adoptive middle-class family next door. A dark cloud hangs over their budding romance in the form of a family debt; Lolita's adoptive father Gurucharan (Achyut Potdar) owes Shekhar's father, ruthless business-man Nabin Roy (Sabyasachi Chakravarthy), money, and if the debt isn't paid Gurucharan's lavish ancestral home will be taken away and turned into a hotel. Help arrives in the form of Girish Babu (Sanjay Dutt), a wealthy relative of a family friend, who agrees to pay the debt, presumably in return for Lolita's hand in marriage; this inflames Shekhar's jealousies, pushing him closer to the woman, Gayatri (Aishwarya Rai look-alike Diya Mirza), chosen for him by his family over the undesirable Lolita. It's the kind of situation that would easily resolve itself if the characters just slowed down and thought about things, but of course, in Bollywood, rash over-reaction is the order of the day. There's nothing more predictable than this kind of melodramatic plot, and of course that is the entire point. One doesn't watch Wile E. Coyote chase the Road Runner hoping that, for once, Wile E. WON'T fall off the cliff; one EXPECTS him to fall off the cliff, WANTS him to fall off the cliff. And one watches a film like Parineeta wanting, indeed expecting, more-or-less the same thing, people flying over figurative cliffs in the name of love, pride and family honor.
The elements are all there - the romance between people from different classes, the misunderstandings leading to crazed, self-destructive acts, the family loyalties in whose name one's desires must be set aside - but the heat isn't turned all the way up, the movie never achieves the level of hysteria one has become accustomed to. Director Pradeep Sarkar remains faithful to the conventions of Indian melodrama while demonstrating a certain unwillingness to cut things all the way loose. The problem with Parineeta is that we halfway believe what we're seeing; the movie veers a little too close to actual psychological realism for it to work as a full-on musical soap opera in the great Bollywood tradition. There's nothing more toxic to melodrama than naturalism; what killed the Hollywood soap opera wasn't changing audience tastes but changing directorial and acting ones, and the same thing may be happening in India now. When Hollywood threw off the old-fashioned theatricality and started striving for "honesty" and "truth," that was when the classic dramatic forms, which had sustained the industry from the days of Griffith on through Sirk, started falling by the wayside. You can't buy melodrama if the actors playing it aren't willing to stretch toward caricature, and if the directors staging it aren't willing to let it all hang out. The new directors, like Sarkar, seem to be hedging their bets; they want to play to the galleries, but may have begun thinking that the old Bollywood forms are out-moded, that what once made for great spectacle is now corny, and that the only way to protect themselves is by holding back. Bollywood directors, and young actors like Saif Ali Khan, may be ready for more realistic, daring material, but the stories they're getting are the same old fluff, and the only choice they have is to compromise, to play the game the same way it's always been played but without the same gusto, the same commitment. The result is something that looks like Bollywood and sometimes feels like Bollywood, but just seems watered-down.
There are things to enjoy about Parineeta even if it doesn't live up to the usual Bollywood standard. There's a marvelous performance by the understatedly commanding Sanjay Dutt as Girish, the classic good guy stuck in an uncomfortable position (the guy the girl should love but doesn't). There's a fabulous musical number set in a 1960s nightclub featuring the sultry Rekha (it's the only memorable number in the movie; Sarkar also seems less-than-enthused about musical staging, which seems almost sacrilegious). There's the assurance of Saif Ali Khan as the romantic lead, the musician Shekhar, and there's the moist-eyed beauty of Vidya Balan as Lolita the orphan girl. One wishes it all came together better, was pushed through with a little more force, a little more enthusiasm. Parineeta is accomplished but tame.