Finally watched HDDCS - Page 5

Ah...the father-issue...

SLB had been more bold in his first movie ...interestingly, this subject (deaf parents, hearing daughter, music) has become the subject of a renowned German movie (released 4 months after Kamoshi), a French-language movie and it's (better) US-remake CODA from two years ago (which got - rightly so - 3 Oscars).

I watched Kamoshi after having watched Devdas and HDDCS (so, a backwards viewing of SLB's movies).

I liked HDDCS as a movie that told a certain story but I didn't like the story...it had a very calculating, manipulating touch...rewarding a certain narrative rooted in Indian life. I already had disliked this all-powerful-father trope in Devdas.

Nevertheless, I agree with Nora's interpretation why Nandini's decision wasn't favourable for Sameer.

Knowing already about what happened between Salman and Aish on a private level, I find it so telling that even the movie which started their relationship hadn't a happy ending for them.

Aish wasn't meant to be with Salman nor with SRK...neither in movies nor in real life (in HTHS Aish is just nominally Salman's girlfriend)... sometimes, some correlations are strange...

I didn’t like the ending.

Originally posted by: Clochette

SLB had been more bold in his first movie ...interestingly, this subject (deaf parents, hearing daughter, music) has become the subject of a renowned German movie (released 4 months after Kamoshi), a French-language movie and it's (better) US-remake CODA from two years ago (which got - rightly so - 3 Oscars).

CODA was wonderful and I'm glad it won Best Picture. The lead actress should have been Oscar nominated as well (she got a BAFTA nomination though). It's so rare for any Indian movie to be remade in English. Usually it's Hollywood films that Bollywood remakes so this is the only example I can think of where the opposite happened.

Sameer or no Sameer, no woman should have to accept forced marriages because the guy is nice.

She had a chance to break free of her abusive dad and she should have stayed in Italy (in movie sense, ended up with Sameer.)

90s Bollywood always tried to justify parents forcing a girl to break up with a partner and marrying accordingly by making the chosen partner poor or the husband extremely saintly. (Pardes was an exception but the message of the film was different.)

But Nandini shouldn't have ended up with Vanraj because she was forced to get with him in the first place, their relationship was intiated with an act of violence perpetrated on her. His goodness does not negate that.

Auratein zagir nahi hoti; personal choice, agency, just a right to live are fundamental rights (and too many movies justifying their violation).

/rant

Also Vanraj was a rich, khandani lawyer and Sameer, an orphaned NRI in rural India. The choices Vanraj could make couldn't have been made by Sameer without risking both his and Nandini's lives.

But my main issue with such endings will always remain how they pretend auratein zagir hoti hain family/gaon/biradiri ki and they were right to force a marriage upon her. Atrangi re turned this trope on its head where her parents were victim of honour killing and the forced marriage of the girl actually took her out of the perpetrators' ambit of influence.

Auratein swadhin insaan hoti hain.