Rumi, centuries ago professed that words are merely a pretext; it is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words, and that is precisely the basis of Karthik’s film.
What delighted me was how the millennial generation
has taken like water to sponge to the concept of friendship and family and how
in order to protect your family all is fair in love and war. And the proof of
that is in the box office collections. The film started to packed houses and
has been the third most popular currency-spinner after Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s
Padmaavat and Akshay Kumar’s Pad Man.
However, we live in times where nothing is free of debates,
and the babble doing media rounds that only the opposite sexes can feel
irreplaceable bonds betwixt each other like how Sonu and Titu feel for each
other is nothing but a heap of garbage. As Luv Ranjan, the writer and director,
thinks, methinks too that love is beyond gender. That love for your friend is as
pure as love for your family, and in this film Luv has drawn a perfect parallel
to what Sonu feels for Titu – he holds Titu as central as his mother, and that
is a sentiment so marvellously explored throughout the whole film. I also think
that when these bonds are formed between any two human beings it is not
necessary that someone else other than those involved in such deeper bonds need
to understand them as they sink deeper than the deepest layer of deep.
In Book
My Show, the critic has taken objection to, and I quote – “In one scene four men are sitting together,
dipping their feet into the pool and knocking back the whiskey. They are
chatting about marriage, women, and relationships.
One of them exclaims: uparwale ne acchi ladki banana hi band kar diya.
I have no idea what director,
writer and co-producer Luv Ranjan’s definition of acchi ladki is. But none of the women in this film
– at least the younger ones – are deemed worthy of the descriptor. Instead they are positioned as manipulative
shrews or hard-drinking airheads willing to do anything to snag a man. Their desperate desire to marry breaks
the bro-code between besties Sonu and Titu. The two chaddi buddies aren’t
lovers – this film isn’t brave enough to consider that – but they are emotional
soul mates.”
Two things
here, first, ‘uparwale ne acchi ladki banana hi band kar diya.’ (The creator has stopped making good girls.) What’s wrong with that? To find a woman in
the 21st Century whom one would like to live one’s life with has become
increasingly difficult simply because to discern the wheat from the chaff these
days is nearly impossible, even chaff has begun to look like wheat. Now is that
an optical illusion? Or only a manner of fooling the mind, one cannot say, but
women are not what they once were. Some might reproach me here of being sexist,
and I am fine with that because if expressing myself as blatantly as I can is misread
as sexist then be it. Also, men have been habituated to satisfying their needs
in finding an outlet with a woman who is agreeable to be part of such a ‘no
strings attached’ liaison, and women have taken to it like tracks are to a
train, thus when the physical needs of women are met at their convenience, they
then begin to pursue men who have the money and the worldly wants they can
obtain from such a relationship. There is nothing wrong with that too, selfishness
and sex has been used as a tool of achievement and assimilation since its
birth, but if wealth is to be attained via means of sexual manipulation as
claims Sweety, then the women are getting their intentions dreadfully wrong. It
is respect and balance that keeps a family united, and if there are hidden
agendas it helps nobody, and in time, the truth does triumph.
Vaginas may lead men to lose their minds, but men
aren’t as timid as they are being made out to be by women in general. Entitle
it an instinct or an intuition; unless a man is a monkey, he will not come
under the sinister spell of a scheming woman. So in that context uparwale ne
achi ladki banana hi band kar diya is most suited to the script. There is such
a paucity of women of this noble temperament.
The premise of this film was not sexual love between two men; it
was primarily about the power of near familial-like attachments even though
Sonu and Titu do not share the same DNA, hence I do not understand what element
of bravery she speaks of here. Even to imply something like this is rather rash, leave alone ridiculous.
The Hindustan
Times reviewer has said, “Have
you met or heard of similar characters in real life? At least I haven’t.”
Columnists ought to get it that criticism
is limited to their own limitations. Simply because you are inexperienced does
not mean that wicked individuals like Sweety do not exist, and says who that
you have to meet similar characters in life in order to identify with them too?
Obviously, Shakespeare didn’t kill to write Hamlet now, did he? I wish newspapers
employ people who have some knowledge and not those who string words for the
sake of filling up columns.
The
Indian Express says, “Can
Ranjan grow up his callow characters? Of course he can, because he has the
smarts (remember Pyar Ka Punchnama?). Does he really want to? I’m not sure.
Sharp comedy of the sexes is the hard stuff. Cheap laughs are easy.”
Do I even need to attempt to offer an explanation to someone
who is, once again, a sister from another mother to the lady at The Hindustan
Times?
The Hindu is a well-regarded paper
when the remaining have been peddled to ruffians, but the woman at The Hindu
went way beyond every other publication when she stated, “FOSLA is a term I got to discover through social media. The Frustrated
One Sided Lovers Association seems to be peopled largely by jilted men, at
least in my limited experience. I’m told that there’s also a dedicated Facebook
page for the community. Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (SKTKS) seems tailormade for the
young male members of this club, in fact all of Luv Ranjan’s films are. The way
he has steadily stood by angst-ridden young men, who have been disillusioned by
women and failed relationships, FOSLA could well be called Ranjan’s oeuvre.”
If FOSLA is Ranjan’s oeuvre, then I don’t know what words I
have to use in order to describe those who make films that sport item numbers.
Aren’t the men who take pleasure in such atrocious depictions of women on the
screen equally guilty, and candidates who would most aptly fall under the FOSLA
club?
One more critic has alleged that the two friends in this
film could as well have come out of the closet. As you would have distinguished
from the gist until now the problem with the critics is that they are a poorly
informed set of idiots who do their job robotically rather than delving profounder
into their hearts and minds, and they do so because they lack the capacity to
grasp that love is not about sex, and certainly all men who love each other
aren’t closeted homosexuals. In a way I am glad these knuckleheads opened their
mouths so that the public understood the meaning of real relationships and the
box office numbers are the testimony of their support to such philosophies.
TO THE CRITICS
OUT THERE
1/ Denounce films that have no rhyme or reason to be
made. Don’t condemn work that works. Also, stop kissing the arses of foolish
filmmakers just because they are famous.
2/ Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety is unadulterated entertainment
and not a story to be analysed or dissected for political correctness. Like
literature is a mirror of the era, Luv is someone who presents us a mirror of
what is happening around us. His characters aren’t in the least shallow or his
work sexist. Look around you and you will see that the balance in humanity is a
bit wonky, and it is this wonkiness that he portrays on the screen in form of
light-hearted entertainment. Despite this summation if you still desire to luxuriate
in roles that are etched with accurate equations then biographies should be on
your watch-list.
3/ What I find incredibly surprising is that the
media honours films that objectify women as nothing but primped up for sex with
five stars, while they reproach Luv of being chauvinist. Don’t you think that
in doing so you are revealing your innermost thoughts for as we think we are,
and as we are, we speak? Wouldn’t it be a window to the world about how sound
your standards are? On what sort of ideologies you uphold? Why is it that the critics
do not study a film for its worth? Why is it that their reviews are inversely
proportional to how much of an arse they want to kiss of the filmmaker who has bestowed
them with goodies?
TO THE MEN OUT
THERE
I would like to tell the men out there that no matter
how much you love your women, do not be blinded by them – there is a huge
difference between being manipulated, and loving someone for who they are.
I would also like to tell the men out there that do
not ruin your relations with those who matter to you no matter how important
the new person in your life. There certainly is room for everyone if you set
your priorities right, so do not delay establishing the rules of the game right
from the start.
A woman can give a man only that which a heterosexual
man cannot give a heterosexual man, genital bliss, yet it does not take a
squarehead to distinguish that genitals do not manage our lives. Our lives are
made up of emotions and of love, and both love and emotions are not built in a
day just as Rome was not too. These things take time, and a lot of burnishing
in order to reach that level of an innate, intimate comfort. Be patient and be
wary and guard your old relationships with an iron fist while you nurture newer
ones until they have proven their mettle.
ON THE FILM
The music by Hitesh Sonik is fabulous. The supporting
cast do their work most efficiently. The cinematography by Sudhir K Chaudhary
is exemplary. The costume design by Niharika Jolly fit perfectly with the flow of the film. Rahul Mody and Luv
Ranjan have done an impressive job with their words.
Kartik Aaryan (Sonu) is proving time and time again
that multi-starrers and fancy scripts are not the chef’s special these days.
That content is the sole ingredient that keeps the food well cooked and nearly everyone
who eats it enjoys it with the same love with which it was prepared. Kartik is
clearly one of the trendiest talents we have in our film industry. Nushrat
Barucha (Sweety) is smooth as a crook. She has grown leaps and bounds from her
first character in Luv’s film as a screechy lover to an evilly intelligent one
in this one. Sunny Singh (Titu) is the hippest. He enacts this astutely daft
role with much coolness. While he is shown as a goofball, when it comes to his
priorities, he knows where is heart is, and what is best for everyone who
matter to him. The only reason he is carefree is because he knows that he has
people looking out for him.
The nicest, par excellence, scene in the film was between Pihu (Ishita
Raj) and Alok Nath in Amsterdam. I rather you
watch it for yourself than me wrecking the sparkle.
Babu, the cook’s role, was a waste of time. It did
nothing for the build up of the story really.
FINALLY
1/ The writer is not generalising his stance and
plastering it as a draft on womankind, he is presenting his point of view, and
it is left entirely to you to absorb it in the manner you deem it fit.
2/ I concur that not all women are cunning, but many
are. Nowadays, they care less for traditions and more for the financial aspects
of a relationship, and when the very foundation is built on shaky grounds, how
can one expect the structure to survive the tremors.
3/ The last scene is testament to the fact that in life
we have to go to great lengths to save the one’s we love from the jaws of
sharks. That family stands supreme o’er disagreements and ego.
Some women have been holding up their hands in rage,
they are lambasting that the female protagonist here claims she is not the
heroine but a villain, and if that is not enough she declares most unashamedly
that she is ‘chalu’ (a player) as well. Much as women want to create a furore
about it, it is best that women accept that women have become chalu these days,
and men have to protect themselves as well as their ilk from such tormenters.
4/ When good films show up on the screen people want
to find a million flaws and complain that no good cinema is around, and when
nonsense is shown with craters of flaws, they accept the same with open arms. I
am thoroughly appalled at the double standards of society.
5/ As far as the bond between Sonu and Titu, I would
say that there are indeed people like Titu, and they need a Sonu to keep them
from harms way irrespective of the world’s estimation of it. And that we have
to love the people we love regardless of how beaten we are by the world for it.
Even in instances where the very people we love are under the influence of
those who are taking them for a jolly good ride, we must keep our eyes open and
our mind vigilant because love is something that is beyond interpretation, and it is
certainly not equated with sexual intimacy, only the intimacy of the heart and
mind. Love just is and we must let it be the way it is.
PS: A NOTE TO
KARTIK
“He
has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;
Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the
respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his
task;
Who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s
beauty or failed to express it;
Who has left the world better than he found it,
Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a
rescued soul;
Who has always looked for the best in others and
given them the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.”
PROUD
OF YOU MERE BACHCHE