Indian movie still on the big screen after 27 years
NYT’S
The writer has worked as an investigative journalist with Indian and international news outlets
Well past the film’s intermission, the crowd keeps trickling in. Some pay at the ticketing window with a couple of taps on their phone; others dump fistfuls of coins.
They are students and office clerks, day labourers still chasing dreams in India’s “maximum city,” and the homeless with dreams long deferred.
India’s film industry puts about 1,500 stories on the screen annually.
But the audience that files every morning into the Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai is here for a movie that premiered 27 years ago — and has resonated so intensely that this oncegrand 1,100-seat theatre has played it everyday since, save for a pandemic hiatus.
The film, “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” — which translates as “The Big-hearted Will Take the Bride” and is known as “DDLJ” — is a boy-meetsgirl story set against the backdrop of a moment of immense change and unbridled possibility in India.
The Indian economy had just opened up, bringing new opportunities, new technologies and new exposure to a rising middle class. But it has also brought new strains as the choices afforded by economic opportunity — to decide your own love and your own life — ran up against the protective traditions of old.
In many ways, the India of today looks like the India reflected in the movie. The economy is still on the rise, and it is now about 10 times the size it was in the mid-1990s.
A technological revolution, this one digital, has opened new worlds. Women are seeking more freedom in a male-dominated society.
And the forces of modernity and conservatism remain in tension as an ascendant political right wing appoints itself the enforcer of conventional values.
The sense of unlimited possibility, however, has receded. As the early rewards of liberalisation peaked and economic inequities deepened, aspirations of mobility have diminished.
For those left behind, the world of “DDLJ” — its story and stars, its music and dialogue — is an escape. For those still striving, it is an inspiration.
And for those who have made it, it is a time capsule, the starting point of India’s transformation.
“It grew and grew and grew and went on to, you know, become an heirloom,” said actress Kajol, 48, who played the female lead, Simran, in the film. “I have had so many people who told me that, you know, ‘We have made our children sit down and watch ‘DDLJ’; we have made our grandchildren sit down and watch’ — and I was like, ‘There are grandchildren now?’”
She burst out laughing. “Children I am fine with. But grandchildren?”
When the pandemic closed theatres for a year, many speculated that “DDLJ’S” record run would end.
But the film is back on for its 11:30 am slot at Maratha Mandir, often drawing crowds larger than those at afternoon screenings of the latest releases.
Some of those who show up have watched it here so many times that they have lost count — 50, 100, hundreds.
A taxi driver who was in the line outside the theatre one morning this fall had seen it six times, a welder about a dozen.
A gray-bearded merchant of second hand goods claimed about 50 viewings, the same for a 33-year-old delivery worker.
Then there were the regular regulars, those who trek here nearly everyday. Madhu Sudan Varma, a 68-year-old homeless man who has a part-time job feeding neighbourhood cats, comes about 20 mornings a month.
The woman with her head wrapped in a plastic bag? “I come everyday,” she said. “I like it everyday.”
No one knows her real name; it may be Jaspim, but even she is unsure. It doesn’t matter, because everyone calls her by the name she prefers: Simran, just like the star on the screen.
Kajol said that the movie’s middle path had broken new ground.
Before “DDLJ,” she said, “we only had films that talked about either this way or that; either we had films that celebrated marriages and everybody was involved from uncles to aunties, or it was ‘us against the world; we will fight it out; we will live together, die together.’ —
THE INDIA OF TODAY LOOKS LIKE THE INDIA REFLECTED IN THE MOVIE. THE ECONOMY IS STILL ON THE RISE, AND IT IS NOW ABOUT 10 TIMES THE SIZE IT WAS IN THE MID-1990S