{"id":8245,"date":"2020-10-17T05:57:03","date_gmt":"2020-10-17T05:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/?p=8245"},"modified":"2020-10-17T05:57:04","modified_gmt":"2020-10-17T05:57:04","slug":"dilwale-dulhania-le-jayenge-at-25-still-glossy-still-romantic-but-out-of-sync-with-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/2020\/10\/17\/dilwale-dulhania-le-jayenge-at-25-still-glossy-still-romantic-but-out-of-sync-with-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge at 25: Still glossy, still romantic but out of sync with times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dilwale\nDulhania Le Jayenge has withstood the test of time, with many viewers going\nback to rewatch it, and its love story is still fresh but also anachronistic\nand out of sync with contemporary realities, say some.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Packaging soft-focus romance within a rigid\nframe of patriarchy, the Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge love story unfolded in\ngrassy Swiss meadows and Punjab\u2019s mustard fields 25 years ago and went on to\nbecome a cult classic that combined desi sensibilities with NRI sensitivities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film, one of India\u2019s most successful, put Shah Rukh Khan and\u00a0Kajol<\/a>\u00a0right up there as among Bollywood\u2019s most popular onscreen pairs down the decades. It has withstood the test of time, with many viewers going back to rewatch it, and its love story is still fresh but also anachronistic and out of sync with contemporary realities, say some.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Raj-Simran romance drama \u2013 not about\nlovers who dare all but more about conformists who love each other desperately\nand will get married only with their parents\u2019 concurrence \u2013 released on October\n20, 1995.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And India woke up to\nromance DDLJ style, where the boy and girl, both London bred but \u2018Indian\u2019 at\nheart, barely hold hands, quite unlike the bolder, franker portrayal of\nrelationships in Hindi cinema today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film centres around Raj, the\ncarefree, rich boy who falls in love with Simran, the dutiful daughter getting\nready to marry a man she has never met, in Europe. They live out the teen dream\nof holidaying in the continent but Simran returns home to London and then to a\nvillage in Punjab where her father has arranged a match for her. Lovelorn Raj\nfollows her there but resolves not to marry her till her strict father\napproves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDDLJ\u201d is all about large-hearted non-resident\nIndian desis and their Indianness, shot in breathtaking locations with a\nsoundtrack by Jatin-Lalit and Anand Bakshi to suit every mood and dialogues\nthat went on to become even more popular in the digital age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twenty-five years later, audiences still watch\nthe film at Mumbai\u2019s Maratha Mandir \u2013 till COVID-19<\/a> struck in March this year \u2013 but\nthe views are as diverse as the first half of the film in London and Alpine\nlocales from the second in a rambunctious family in a Punjab village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to senior film critic Saibal\nChatterjee, the movie inaugurated \u201cthe era of the designer film made for NRIs\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DDLJ marked the directorial debut of Aditya\nChopra, son of veteran filmmaker Yash Chopra, known as the King of Romance in\nHindi cinema. The 1995 film, also starring the late Amrish Puri, Farida Jalal\nand Anupam Kher<\/a>,\nreleased at a time when India had opened up to liberalisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prema Maharish, 84,\nremembers going to see the film in a Mathura hall and remembers the dialogues\nverbatim. Her particular favourite is the stern father letting go off Simran\u2019s\nhand in the climax with these words, \u201cJa Simran Ja. Jee le apni zindagi. (Go\nSimran, go live your life).\u201d And the young woman, having finally got her\nfather\u2019s permission, runs towards the train picking up pace as it pulls out of\nthe platform to hold Raj\u2019s extended hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is romance and\nhope in not knowing it. The woman has been set free and maybe she will have a\nbrighter future. That\u2019s what Hindi cinema is about, it\u2019s about hope, not\nreality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge has withstood the test of time, with many viewers going back to rewatch it, and its love story is still fresh but also anachronistic and out of sync with contemporary realities, say some. Packaging soft-focus romance within a rigid frame of patriarchy, the Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge love story unfolded in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,24],"tags":[6062,13762,1221,82,11055,11382,2830,12789,12700,13759,13761,6363,426,224,6656,13763,13760,738],"class_list":["post-8245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment-news","category-india-news","tag-aditya-chopra","tag-amrish-puri","tag-anupam-kher","tag-bollywood","tag-bollywood-celebrity","tag-bollywood-fashion","tag-celebrity","tag-celebrity-style","tag-coronavirus","tag-ddlj","tag-dilwale-dulhania-le-jayenge-at-25-still-glossy","tag-farida-jalal","tag-kajol","tag-shah-rukh-khan","tag-singer","tag-still-romantic-but-out-of-sync-with-times","tag-superhit","tag-yash-raj-films"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8248,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245\/revisions\/8248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}