ARG! This movie pissed me off so much. All it had to be it just the tiniest bit less misogynistic, the tiniest bit more coherent, and I would have loved it. I loved Parineeti Chopra, Arjun Kapoor was acceptable, and even if the rural, testosterone-fueled gun-toting setting wasn’t anything new, it was fun to watch. I came back to this review a year later, trying to give the movie another chance. Well, it still doesn't work for me, despite knowing what I was getting into.
Zoya Qureshi is the headstrong, spunky daughter of a local politician. Parineeti Chopra is a lot of fun to watch and she just shines here. Arjun Kapoor plays Parma Chauhan, the grandson of the opposing political candidate, he likes to beat people up for no reason and set fire to warehouses full of diesel. He’s Hindu, she’s Muslim. They meet while campaigning (or in Parma’s case, generally causing trouble) for their respective families, they fight, he points a gun at her head, she slaps him, that sort of thing. After he corners her in the bathroom at college, she decides she’s in love. (Yeah. Don’t worry, it gets worse.) They have an adorable little courtship, until he sets up a secret wedding for them, with both Hindu and Muslim rites. Right after they consummate their marriage in an abandoned train car, Parma gets up and tells Zoya that it was all a lie, and he just did all this to get back at her for slapping him.
The shit, as it does, then hits the fan. Parma sends pictures of Zoya’s secret Hindu wedding to the entire town, disgracing her dad and costing him the election. Zoya goes to his home with a gun, but is intercepted by Parma’s mother who tries to convince her to reform Parma instead of shooting him, gets herself shot in the process, now everybody wants to kill them both and we get a mess of running around shooting people for most of the second half of the film (with an interlude hiding in the local brothel wherein Zoya decides that she forgives Parma, who says he is trying to make amends, they have a real wedding, then there is more shooting).
 |
| The warring families unite to go after Parma and Zoya. |
It's not all bad. The soundtrack is lovely, from the beautiful Pareshaan to Parineeti dancing with the item girl in Jhalla Wallah. (Gauhar Khan is lovely even in her thoroughly unoriginal role.)
But there’s just no way to get behind the love story. It wasn’t their love that caused all the trouble, it was those pictures of Zoya in the wedding garland sent to the entire town! Sure, the reason Parma’s family wanted him dead was because he stood by Zoya after his mother took a bullet for her (the first time, as The Vigil Idiot points out, that a bullet actually hits anybody despite the constant background track of gunfire), but Zoya was screwed the moment she showed up for the secret wedding. Parma never seems to realize that, which completely invalidates his “redemption”. I mean, okay, so he didn’t let his family kill her. That’s kind of basic “not a horrible person” level, you don’t get points for that.
I thought Parma’s mother was an interesting character. She manipulates Zoya into redeeming Parma (or at least, you know, not killing him right now) She also knows well enough what Zoya doesn’t realize until much later in the movie-- there’s no way Zoya’s father will accept her back after all this. It’s clear she sees this as the only way for Zoya to live and her son to be tamed-- the fact that is means Zoya must not only forgive her rapist, but actively take responsibility for him is incidental to her, just a product of the patriarchal setting that she can’t escape from anyway. But that the movie refuses to acknowledge that is its biggest flaw.
The ending PSA was just the icing on the shit cake. I couldn’t see the movie as a tragedy of star-crossed love, it was just the tragedy of misogyny.
No comments:
Post a Comment