Director: Sooraj R. Barjatya; Writer: Sooraj R. Barjatya; Producer: Ajit Kumar Barjatya, Kamal Kumar Barjatya, Rajat A. Barjatya, Rajkumar Barjatya, Sooraj R. Barjatya; Cinematographer: Rajan Kinagi; Editor: Mukhtar Ahmed; Cast: Madhuri Dixit, Salman Khan, Mohnish Bahl, Renuka Shahane, Anupam Kher, Reema Lagoo, Alok Nath, Bindu, Ajit Vachani, Satish Shah, Himani Shivpuri, Sahila Chaddha, Dilip Joshi, Laxmikant Berde, Priya Arun, Tuffy, Srinivas Pathak, Dinesh Hingoo, Babbanlal Yadav, Abha Bhandari, Bala Dhingra, Sushil Verma, Pramod Kumar, Nandlal Jaiswal, Chhaya, Sudarshan, Jayshree R. Godbole, Kavita Kamath, Avani A. Patel, Deepali S. Kothari, Shweta Kalgutkar, Devshree R. Bhojak, Kinnary R. Bhojak, Harbans Darshan M. Arora
Duration: 03:05:06; Aspect Ratio: 2.353:1; Hue: 6.736; Saturation: 0.110; Lightness: 0.374; Volume: 0.231; Cuts per Minute: 12.404
Summary: Promoted as the most successful Indian film
ever, the plot concerns the arranged marriage
between Rajesh (Bahl), nephew and heir to the
industrial empire of Kailashnath (Nath), and
Pooja (Shahane), daughter of the equally rich
Professor Choudhury (Kher). Most of the 3-
hour film is devoted to a series of festivities
with parties in the Ram temple and at the
homes of the two families, one chronicling the
marriage itself and another when Pooja is
pregnant. Prem (Khan), Rajesh’s younger
brother, falls in love with Pooja’s sister Nisha
(Dixit). The elaborate entertainment of an
ostentatious North Indian wedding with its
enormous consumption of food is also the
scene of the mandatory pranks played upon
each other by the ‘younger generation’ led by
Prem and Nisha, their sexual and voyeuristic
overtones sanctioned, even at times replicated
(e.g. in the song Saamne samdhan hai) by the
older generation. Both families, including
Kailashnath’s cook (Berde), are free of any
traces of class or gender conflict in the film’s
celebration of a fantasy in which unbridled
consumerism and religiosity combine without
problems. The especially dominant food motif
is stressed by the song ‘Ice Cream Chocolate’,
sung by Lata Mangeshkar, and illustrated by
large advertising posters in Nisha’s room. The
only exception to the general religioconsumerist
bliss is a fussy and generally
disliked aunt (Bindu), who insists on
mentioning issues such as the dowry and class
differences, for which she gets slapped by her
husband (Vachani). Pooja’s moving into
Kailashnath’s home leads to utopia itself,
blessed by her religiosity (she prays to the gods
Krishna and Rama, both of whom actively
intervene into the story). However, all this is
interrupted when Pooja falls down a flight of
stairs and dies. To restore the situation, the
families decide that Nisha will marry the
widowed Rajesh, but the happy ending, and a
second marriage, arrives only when the dog
Tuffy, an incarnation of Krishna, becomes the
instrument for revealing that Nisha loves the
younger brother, Prem. This remake of Rajshri’s
far from successful earlier Nadiya Ke Paar
(1982) proved to be an astonishing success as
has the effectiveness of its marketing as a
‘clean’ family film. It is arguable that the fantasy
of a feudal elite that has successfully negotiated
its transition to capitalism while retaining its
allegedly ‘traditional’ religiosity underpins an
appeal to the audience’s voyeurism as well as
to a devotional fervour hitherto reserved for
explicitly religiously themes.
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