Dil Ne Jise Apna Kahaa, directed by Salman Khan’s brother Atul Agnihotri, isn’t a bad film. It’s a boring film. And that’s worse than being bad. Salman Khan’s recent starrer Garv was an awful film. But it gripped the audience. In the absence of a gripping plot, cohesive narration and coherent characterizations, Dil Ne… simply fragments, scatters, and falls into a clutter of tear-squeezing episodes that leave you gasping for breath… like the film’s leading lady Dhani (Bhoomika Chawla), who has a congenital heart problem.
The sunny doctor Pari (Preity Zinta) conveniently has a road accident and donates her heart to the girl on the next bed before kicking the bucket… and letting loose a torrent of sobs and tears from her husband.
To his credit, Salman carries off the tough-guys-do-cry act with emotive fecundity. His reactions during Preity Zinta’s death sequence appear heartfelt. But not enough so to camouflage the film’s stifled screams of groaning protest against the liberties taken in the plot.
The incidents leading up to the awful tragedy are vaguely engaging. Khan shares an easygoing camaraderie with Zinta, and it shows in their sequences together. Once Pari is knocked up and knocked off by the scriptwriters, the film goes out of control, much like the mo’bikes spinning out of control and hurling Pari’s car over the edge, toppling the plot into the arena of a triangular tragedy featuring Man, Woman, and Dead Wife’s Ghost which haunts both Salman and the film in equally distracting measures.
Dil Ne Jise… isn’t the first film about a heart transplant. World cinema got there first. And recently there was David Duchovny in Return to Me, pining for his suddenly-deceased wife until another woman with the dead woman’s heart shows up to claim space in his affections.
The trouble is, Dil Ne Jise… thinks with its heart. The sweeping sentimentality of the plot isn’t matched by the aura created in the narrative. Minus the fun sequences between Salman and Preity, there’s little here to suggest the acute romanticism of two broken hearts mended by surgery and love, respectively.
Salman Khan and Bhoomika Chawla, who shared a successful togetherness in Tere Naam, here seem to be wading through a wasteland of ill-conceived sequences written more for the sake of reaching the inevitable (happy) conclusion than to explore the journey undertaken by two traumatized souls united by the life-giving death of one woman.
It’s a powerful subject rendered emasculated by Atul Agnihotri’s pale direction. Birds chirp in a studio-built home to announce a happy morning, violins fill the soundtrack to announce any maudlin occasion… the imagination runs right when an unpredictable riot of feelings is a feasible option for creating surprise for the audience.
Music and songs — so essential to prop up a romantic tale — are, at best, serviceable. A. R. Rahman’s title song goes for hankypanky instead of the hankie. The choreography doesn’t help to relieve the tide of tedium that engulfs the narration as it progresses from doom to bust… and I do mean bust.
In a breathy wedding dance, Bindiya chamkne lagi, churi khanak lagi… saanse behekne lagi… the camera goes from Ms. Chawla’s forehead, to wrist, to heaving bosom! Could it be that they mistook the breath (saanse) for the breast?
Such confusions arise from the inherent inability of the director to rise to the occasion. Salman props up the creaky show as much as he can. But his understated machismo goes only this far. The temper-tantrums in the second half are too much Salman and too little Rishab, the grieving widower’s character he plays.
In one sequence he shouts at his well-meaning colleague and friend (Asif Sheikh), “I can throw this phone, these flowers if I want”… and proceeds to do just that.
The pain of loss is somewhere diluted by the absence of genuine conviction in the narration. The supporting characters are quite a commodious bunch, and often redundant. Salman’s sister, played by Renuka Shahane, seems to be there just to remind audiences of their collaboration in Hum Aapke Hain Koun. And you have to be really patient to accept Rati Agnihotri as a doctor.
Salman Khan’s office colleagues are a noisy caricatural bunch… a featherbrained girl (Delnaaz Paul) who speaks wrong Hindi, another guy who stammers (giggle giggle), and a frumpy matronly steno whom boss Salman sportingly calls, ‘Sexy’ every morning to show what a regular guy he is.
Why, Salman even feeds the guy who comes to steal in his house and sends him away with a warning, “No more theft.”
The director needs a similar warning for stealing so cutely from Return to Me. He also needs to be told that gay jokes (surrounding Bobby Darling’s advances towards Asif Sheikh) aren’t amusing.
Otherwise, Atul Agnihotri deserves praise for picking a subject where there are no item songs (except a Bhangra number by Salman and Preity), no vulgarity, and no villains… except destiny. Wish he or she would be kind to a film that’s guilty of nothing except sluggishness.
