God in the machine: notes on Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
It feels a bit silly reviewing a Yash Raj Films opus starring Shah Rukh Khan. You know that the film is going to find its audience regardless of what you think about it; that you’re being a killjoy and a pedant if you point to flaws of logic or to the thousand plot loopholes (you’re simply not supposed to notice these things); and that if you didn’t at least think of the film as decent paisa-vasool, you’re best off not discussing it at all. But a professional reviewer doesn’t have that option, and so the thing to do is to find some talking point and stick with it until the requisite word-count has been met.
So let me focus on the deep sympathy I feel for Tani, the heroine of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. Not because she loses her husband-to-be and his family in a bus accident within the first five minutes of the film, and is subsequently orphaned when her father suffers a heart attack on hearing the news. No, these tragedies are quickly glossed over. The really tough thing about Tani’s life is the decision she is expected to make towards the end of this exhausting movie. Choosing between two men can be difficult in itself, but when both men occupy the same body and you’re expected to plump for the one with the bad haircut rather than the one with the six-pack abs…What’s a girl to do?
The trouble begins when Tani’s boring replacement husband Surinder, who works with the Punjab Power board, decides to electrify her life with an elaborate masquerade. He undergoes a makeover that involves shaving off his moustache, changing his hairstyle, wearing tighter clothes, acquiring a new set of biceps and generally looking a little more like Shah Rukh Khan than he did before; in this new avatar as the “hep” Raj, he becomes Tani’s dancing partner in a local competition. (In the fine tradition of short-sighted heroines from Lois Lane downwards, Tani fails to realise that the mousy Surinder, with whom she stiffly has dinner every night, is the same person as style-boy Raj with whom she greedily consumes gol-gappas and goes on bike rides through the narrow lanes of Amritsar.)
Now here’s the rub (rab?): having gone to ridiculous extremes to create an exciting new persona that he knows will appeal to his wife more than his “real self” ever could, Surinder/Raj takes the higher ground and decides that his wooing of Tani can be deemed successful only if she falls in love with the dullard Surinder, not with his alter-ego. The basic flaw in this premise is for anyone to see: imagine Christian first passing off Cyrano’s poetry as his own and then insisting that Roxane passes the “test” only if she loves him for his own bilge. (For this analogy to be fully satisfying, Christian and Cyrano would have to be the same person and Roxane would have to be short-sighted, but you get the drift.)
Anyway, given Tani’s nascent feelings for Raj, the big question is: how does the film arrive at an ending that will satisfy everyone and uphold all the moral requirements? The solution is stunning in its simplicity. (Obligatory Spoiler Alert, though if you really want a spoiler alert for this film, you’re a loser and need a makeover.) In a short, unfussy scene set at the Golden Temple, Tani experiences an epiphany where she realises that her “Rab” (God) is Surinder. No, really – that’s it. This movie has been invoking Rab’s divine will at regular intervals long before this moment, but it’s usually been done in an offhand sort of way, so we aren’t quite prepared for a scene where He literally enters the confused girl’s mind, fiddles with her synapses and sees to it that she makes the “right” decision. This is God as the ultimate Deus ex machina.
Which is not to say there’s nothing good about Rab ne…. At least 20 of its 170 minutes are watchable. There are a couple of charming vignettes, such as an early scene involving a rose stem, which hints at an unseen romantic side to the reticent Surinder, long before his makeover happens. Vinay Pathak could easily have phoned in his performance as Surinder’s hair-stylist buddy Bobby, but in the context of this film it must be counted as a bright spot. In the Surinder-Bobby relationship and in Surinder’s remark to Tani that “maine kabhi lady se pyaar nahin kiya” (”I have never loved a lady”), we see glimpses of the ambiguous form that male bonding can take in small towns where interaction between the sexes is restricted before marriage. But this isn’t particularly explored elsewhere in the film. Incidentally, the scene where Bobby introduces the word “macho” into a Punjabi sentence and then turns it into a refrain may prove to be a landmark moment in the history of profanity in mainstream Bollywood. Especially because Pathak does the bucolic Punju accent with gusto and the script requires him to say sentences where the word immediately following “macho” begins with a “D” sound.
But the best thing about Rab ne… is the voiceover with the “honeymoon in Japan” postcards that accompany the closing credits. If you’ve already bought tickets for this film, you should consider entering the hall three hours after the starting time.
P.S. I’m looking forward to the next Shah Rukh movie that isn’t a meta-film with references to his Raj image and the obligatory song sequence where a bevy of SRK’s favourite heroines (Kajol, Rani Mukherjee, Preity Zinta etc) fawn over him. The fantasy song sequence “Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte” looked like an outtake from Om Shanti Om.
on Saturday, December 13th, 2008, 11:01 am in Film › 
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Backhand smash.
I am sorry to say this, but the only thing that is unbearable about RNBDJ is your review of it. To explain why your review is meaningless it seems I need to explain to you why people watch and enjoy movies, or for that matter why people read and enjoy stories - and that my friend is too great a task for me. One of the main reasons people watch movies, arguably, is to be entertained and RNBDJ definitely delivers on that count. The cinematography is beautiful, the character development is excellent, and even the choreography and music are simple and tasteful, although i was slightly annoyed by the constant repetition of the main hook over and over again in the beginning. RNBDJ is a fairytale story and criticizing the movie for its superficial inconsistencies or absurdities is short-sighted, and in fact I can only imagine how dry your own life must be if you were so hung up by these minor details the entire time you were watching this movie. The movie takes on the subject of love (admittedly overdone in indian cinema, and definitely to be expected from a yash raj production) but the treatment of this subject is very refreshing and honest. What I liked best was the relationship between Suri and Raj and how Aditya Chopra played with the entire concept of “changing yourself for the one you love” showing both the good and the bad. I feel that the movie was handled masterfully and aditya successfully captured many of the subtleties of his chosen subject. So please think a little about the movie before you choose review it.
Akhil: fess up now - you comment regularly on Rediff.com messageboards, right?
Actually, scrap that - you know how to write full, grammatically correct sentences so you’re automatically disqualified from that noble forum.
Won’t provide a lengthy retort to your comment since I’ve already clarified my views on reviewing in tedious detail in the past, but quickly: this review reflects how I felt about the film, and makes an attempt to articulate why I felt that way. It isn’t delivered from a pulpit and doesn’t claim to be any sort of final word on the film. And I don’t question the ulterior motives or tastes of anyone who might like the film (or make personal remarks about them, the way you’ve done in your comment).
My goal was not to say that everyone should like the movie, I agree people have their own tastes and are entitled to express their opinions, but if you are going to criticize a movie at least have something thoughtful to say about why you don’t like it. Writing a review just because you have to write something is unfair to both movie-goers who like to read reviews before watching or even pick movies based on reviews, as well as to the people who make these movies. A large majority of movies coming out of Bollywood are terrible mainly due to half-baked scripts/ideas and incompetent directing ( I dont even want to get into the actors), so when a movie comes out that is not any of the above, and I do think that aditya chopra knows what he is doing even if he is not a very versatile director or screenwriter. Take “Taare Zameen Par” for example, hailed as the best movie of 2007 winning all sorts of awards with that little kid winning best actor etc. Subject-wise the movie was very relevant to indian society and it struck a sensitive chord with audiences all over. However, there was almost no acting, most of the scenes with the kid had him standing or sitting looking sad and miserable with an emotional soundtrack running in the background. But the movie was successful because the story and message resounded with audiences all over.
I apologize for the personal attack, I guess in my passion I just wanted to get a rise out of you because thats what your review did to me, it got a rise out of me. You do say that you are a professional reviewer and I hope that you will put a little more thought into movie reviews. I am not saying that you have to be an expert on films to review them ( I am definitely no expert), just be a little more considerate, and sensitive as a viewer and maybe you will see rab in one of these movies someday.
P.S. ok so the last pun was really corny and bad, but I have no idea what you mean by the whole rediff thing at the beginning of your post and your article was well written your analysis, unfortunately wasn’t
Some movies are so bad, they deserve to be reviewed with the same contempt the writers show their audience.
Akhil: I appreciate much of what you say in your comment, but (at risk of sounding defensive - though that can’t be avoided in this situation, right?) your “I hope that you will put a little more thought into movie reviews” comes across as another personal attack. Without extolling my own movie-reviewing skills, I would encourage you to take a look at some of the earlier film reviews I’ve written on my site (you’ll find them under “Films” on the sidebar) and perhaps consider that a certain amount of “thought” does go into them, even if my assessment of those films is completely different from yours (which, I suspect, is the real problem here). At the same time, I do reserve the right to go slightly off-tangent in writing about a film that I couldn’t really engage with. I DID make a stab at articulating why Rab Ne didn’t work for me (the randomness of Tani’s choice and how it’s resolved), but if that explanation didn’t work for you, well, so be it. This was never going to be a holistic review anyway; the film just didn’t stimulate me enough, positively or negatively.
On the other hand, maybe I should shut up now, because reading your “just be a little more considerate, and sensitive as a viewer”, I realise that that’s often what I say to fellow book-reviewers who only seem to see negatives in whatever they’re reviewing. (Believe it or not, I have a reputation for being an overly kind book reviewer!)
And forget the Rediff thing…if you didn’t get the reference that probably means you haven’t been on that site’s messageboard, and I wouldn’t encourage you to start visiting the ghastly thing.
Always sending love to Jabberwocky for saving me three hours of my life from sitting through these atrocities. I should send you my interview with SRK from when was in La-La land promoting Paheli. My annoyance was so obvious at his rehearsed rhetoric, that these cookie cutter templates Yash keeps putting out are such an embarrassment to Bollywood. Kitchy, kitchy crap is at its best. Why won’t he just go away?
Arrey yaar. it’s a business. that said… you guys should really check out the largest desi hit ever the fun starts at 4:00 and you’ll know the recipe for a good/successful movie. ;-)
But a content biz requires far more novelty than, say, an appliance biz.
That sequence is a veritable masterclass in physics. Check out Bernoulli’s law at 4:32, Newton’s third law at 6:00, and a variant of Maxwell’s corkscrew rule at 7:12. Not to mention a crotch shot that would make Paris Hilton jealous at 5:00.
Jabberwock,
What did you think of the new heroine?
I didn’t know bollywood could be embarrassed.
SRK is indeed Fletch-like in his skills at disguise. Contact lenses in Baazigar separated his avatars as mild-mannered bookwork, and devilishly charming (him of the prehensile lower lip, and the hardest working sneer in Bollywood) serial killer, and now mustaches work their magic again. Next stop: His role as Yudhishtra in a Karan Johar retelling of the Pandavas’ year incognito, which, as we all know, ended with the Pandavas, Kauravas, and the Yadavs coming together in an orgy of color, dancing, and that eerie Johar movie chorus chant of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.
i have to say i completely agree with your review. in the beginning, surinder is shown making breakfast and wondering whether to wake taani up, and then grappling with whether leaving her a rose would be too showy a gesture or not. i thought, hah!, so aditya chopra is influenced by prufrock’s ‘do i dare eat a peach’ personna. but then when the movie devolves into taani’s dilemma (and her bad eyesight as you point out): to choose the man who helped her when she was down or the man who makes her happy, and to surinder’s ‘test’ for taani, the whole movie falls apart. had chopra concentrated on surinder and taani just making ordinary adjustments, we could have still had a complete masala film. the gratuitous insert of plot # 2, was really what killed the movie. and the deus ex machina, taani opening her eyes to surinder, who’s now acquired a glowing halo in the golden temple, was completely unsatisfying. but what do i know? i never see ‘god’ in my lovers :) the song, ‘tujh mein rab dikhta hai’ was awful. just what were those hordes of sikh kids doing running around in the cathedral!!
that said, when i saw surinder make chai and omlette and toast for taani, doing the dishes after he’s done with breakfast, that’s when i struck me — of course, this man was god! i won’t be surpised if women start forwarding that youtube clip to SOs in droves.
and yeah, a word about the closing credits. the entire audience was enlivened — the only oohs and aahs i heard during the entire screening.
I was invited to watch rab ne bana di jodi, but after watching the promos and reading the reviews and with the benefit of foresight of having watched a few of these Yash RAJ flicks, my involutary muscles spasms started to do a dard-e-disco and I lost like 5 pounds in puke taking me one step closer to the sick pack. thanks srk!