Note: I’m happy to inform you that Film Fatale has won the Ramnath
Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award 2015 for ‘Commentary and Interpretative
Writing’. You can click here to read all the Film Fatales published in 2015 (and
from the launch of the column in February 2014):
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/author/anna-mm-vetticad/article6316861.ece
Thank you dear readers and Team Hindu Businessline for your constant support. J Anna
HOW KJO REWORKED AE DIL HAI MUSHKIL
An A-Z
guide to why and how the director rewrote, re-edited and re-dubbed his film
By
Anna MM Vetticad
I finally
re-watched Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM) to rid myself of doubts that
have nagged me since I saw it on October 28. (Spoilers ahead)
I watched it
particularly for that scene in which Anushka Sharma’s character Alizeh Khan
stands on the terrace of what is supposedly a house in Lucknow, speaking on the
phone to Ranbir Kapoor’s Ayan Sanger in London. Ayan is reluctant to attend her
wedding. I do not have a visa, he says. On first viewing the film, I recall
hesitating momentarily over that dialogue. It seemed strange coming from a
British-born Indian, a British passport holder to boot, who could surely easily
manage a visa to India. I shrugged it off though as possibly just a mindless
excuse from a man unwilling to witness his beloved marrying someone else. On
the second viewing, however, as I watched ADHM with microscopic scrutiny
born of baggage I will explain shortly, I confirmed for myself that Ayan’s
remark was not made lightly.
Read Alizeh’s lips,
please. The city to which she invites Ayan for her wedding is Karachi, though
Sharma’s voice dubbing over those lips says “Lucknow”. Now it makes sense – one
constant through years of India-Pakistan tension has been that for people of
both nationalities, getting a visa to the other is no cakewalk, thus perhaps
prompting a doubt in the mind of even a British passport-holding Indian.
Unless you have
been holidaying on Mars in recent weeks, you would know why producer-director
Karan Johar might have felt driven to make such a crucial change in ADHM.
Following the September 2016 terror attacks on the Army in Uri in Jammu &
Kashmir, when Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) demanded a Bollywood boycott of Pakistan, it pointedly targeted ADHM for featuring Pakistani heart-throb
Fawad Khan. Imagine the heat Johar would have faced if this violence-prone
party had additionally discovered that five characters in his story were
Pakistanis.
In the run-up to ADHM’s
release, MNS asked why Fawad’s character could not simply be eliminated since
it was a cameo anyway. Clearly people with zero understanding of cinema have no
clue that every word, every look, every situation adds meaning to a film.
When you are in a
theatre, some moments wash over you, impacting the subconscious and influencing
your overall experience of a film even when you are unable to explain the exact
reasons for your reactions. In my case, ADHM left me with a gnawing
feeling of incompleteness. My disconnect with it was mostly instinctive. If I
intend to review a film, I usually avoid pre-release promotional material and
news reports as far as is reasonably possible, so I was unaware of any media
speculation about ADHM on this front. While watching it though, sundry
dialogues, Alizeh and Saba’s language and styling made me wonder if they had
originally been written as Pakistanis. I remember noticing that Saba’s
nationality is unspecified. All we know is she’s a Vienna-based Urdu poet who
looks South Asian. Considering that Ayan makes a fuss about them both being
British passport holders, it was odd that their country of origin did not come
up. Or did it? And were those lines chopped?
I have since seen
unconfirmed Internet murmurs about how
Johar reworked ADHM. After rewatching the film and contacting multiple
impeccable sources in Bollywood, here is what I can confirm: first, Alizeh’s marriage
was in Karachi, not Lucknow (or Lahore as some websites have surmised); second,
Alizeh, her boyfriend Faisal, her ex-boyfriend Ali (Fawad), Saba (Aishwarya Rai
Bachchan) and her ex-husband (Shah Rukh Khan) were all conceived as Pakistanis;
third, contrary to reports, Johar did not reduce Fawad’s role in the film
post-Uri, but he did rewrite, re-dub and re-edit ADHM to scissor out
every reference to Pakistan and Pakistanis in the story.
The director has
flatly denied all this in an interview I just recorded with him, but an
obsessive viewer’s eyes and instincts do not lie.
Note for instance
Ayan and Saba’s introductory meeting. He is heading to London from Alizeh’s
‘Lucknow’ wedding, so it is implied that they are at Lucknow airport. Baah!
Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport is a humble, decidedly unpolished
affair. Clearly that glitzy lounge in ADHM was originally meant to be in
Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport.
Note too Ayan’s
girlfriend Lisa’s first encounter with Alizeh and Faisal. The camera is on her
back when she tells them that since they are Khans, she practised to say (cut
to her face) “Salaam waleikum”. Were we not shown a front shot when she
uttered the opening words of that sentence because her lip movements could not
be camouflaged by dubbing “both of you are Khans” over the actual line “both of
you are Pakistanis”?
This is not trivia
or nitpicking. Point is, the spirit and intent of ADHM were drastically
altered to pre-empt extremist wrath. An Indian befriending a Pakistani in the
capital city of a former colonial power is an idea steeped in potentially
beautiful sub-text that is now lost forever. A story of unrequited love
involving these warring neighbours takes on far deeper meaning than ADHM
has now.
For a cinephile, it
is heartbreaking that a filmmaker was so terrorised by pre-release
controversies that he changed key elements in his story to avoid further irking
fundamentalists. How did we, as a nation, get here?
(This article
was first published in The Hindu Businessline’s BLink on November 12, 2016.)
Link to column published in The Hindu Businessline:
Related Link: Anna M.M. Vetticad’s
review of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil
Related Article by Anna M.M.
Vetticad: Crying Beef Over Ae Dil Hai
Mushkil: Let’s Expose the Fake Patriotism, Please
Previous instalment of Film
Fatale: Hey, Right-Wingers, Leave the Arts Alone
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