I don’t think that title is a spoiler for people who get it without warning? Unless you happen to know what my least favorite SRK Romance plots are, and even then it’s only a partial spoiler.
Whole plot, simplified version:
In the present day, older Taapsee, older Vikram Kocchar, and older Anil Grover are desperate to leave London and get home to India, but cannot get Visas. So Taapsee calls their old friend Shahrukh who promises he can get them home. In the past, the same three were desperate to leave their small town. Shahrukh arrives, a soldier on leave looking to visit Taapsee’s brother, and learns her brother is dead leaving Taapsee the sole wage earner for her parents, her nephew, and her widowed sister-in-law. He feels obligated to her family and offers to help her and her friends get their Visas to England. They join Boman Irani’s English class together where they meet Vicky Kaushal who is desperate to get to England so he can save his girlfriend from an abusive husband. Taapsee defends Shahrukh in class and befriends him and he falls in love with her. Only Anil Grover manages to get his Visa, and Vicky kills himself after learning that his girlfriend is already dead. Boman feels so guilty, he helps arrange for them to take the “Dunki” route, the illegal overland route to England. Shahrukh takes charge once they are on the way, guiding them from stop to stop and protecting their small group, including killing a band of roving militia who try to kill them along the way. In England, they learn Anil Grover lied about his success and is struggling to survive. They join him in a miserable existence, living in shadows and afraid of the police. Shahrukh wants to go back home, but Taapsee convinces him to stay for her sake. In the end, they have to choose between lying and claiming asylum, or being deported. Shahrukh chooses to go back to India, Taapsee chooses to lie, and they have been separated ever since. In the present day, after they meet up again, they learn that both lied to the other about having gotten married to someone else. And that Taapsee is dying of a brain tumor, that’s why she wants to go home, to see her family again before she dies. Shahrukh helps them sneak from Dubai back to India, brings them back to the village to see their families, and then proposes to Taapsee (finally) AS SHE DIES.
Veer-Zaara, Jab Tak Hain Jaan, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, this movie, why can’t Shahrukh and his girlfriends just TELL EACH OTHER THE TRUTH??? Why always this crazy “I will lie that I am happy with someone else, and you will lie that you are happy with someone else, and we will be separated for NO REASON for 3-30 years”????
That’s the part of the movie that felt realest to me, the Taapsee chemistry and the Taapsee-Shahrukh characters are excellent, and the whole love story is thrown away for yet ANOTHER “Oh no, we didn’t bother to google each other for 20 years and only now are realizing we can be together?” twist. What’s even odder is that in the “present day” opening, their relationship is treated as this laughing “old boyfriend-old girlfriend” thing, and then we see the flashback to their good-bye and it is HEARTBREAKING. Really, for 20 years, they just did nothing about it and lived with the heartbreak? And if that wasn’t stupid enough, now she has to DIE???
Okay, moving on from the Margaret Trigger plot, there were a lot of other things this movie shoved in that were just STUPID. And unnecessary too, that’s what is really frustrating. Like, how Taapsee and Shahrukh met. Taapsee needs a wrestling coach so she can learn some basic moves and possibly get a Visa as an athlete. She meets Shahrukh and sees him use a wrestling throw to knock someone out and eagerly asks him to teach her. That’s a great cute meeting! And a cute way to get Shahrukh, a soldier on leave with no interest in any of this, involved in the Visa quest. And then it’s thrown in that actually coincidentally Shahrukh was in town looking for Taapsee’s brother who SAVED HIS LIFE and carried him on his back to a hospital. That’s already too much, add on Sharukh’s life was in danger because he was SHOT BY A TERRORIST, and that Taapsee’s brother MISSED OUT ON LEAVING FOR THE ASIAN GAMES because he stopped along the way to save Shahrukh’s life. Oh, and now her brother is dead. Allllllllllllll of this stuff, all thrown out in like 2 minutes, and then never mentioned again. And it DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO BE THERE!!! Shahrukh had already met Taapsee, he was already committed to helping her, you could have just left that weird coincidental family tragedy alone.
There are so many things in this movie that feel like that. And I think they all have a similar cause, it’s Hirani talking a lot of nonsense to cover up the fact that he is avoiding the truth, that India has problems and there’s a reason young people dream of a life overseas. People take these desperate migration risks because they really REALLY can’t find what they need at home. Money, education, freedom, equality, food, hope. That’s what this story is, and Hirani is right to want to tell it. England came in and destroyed India’s economy, society, education, everything. They built the modern healthy British state on the backs of colonialism. It is absolutely fair and just that Indians should be able to come to England (and Canada and Australia and any other British territory) to benefit from this economy they helped build. Only, none of that makes sense if you don’t show WHY people want to leave India.
None of the main characters have siblings who have needs. Or extended family. Or children. It is themselves and their parents. They all live in family homes owned by their parents. They all have jobs. Their parents have jobs. They have food. Their families do not want them to go to England, it is a dream they have out of rebellion. None of this feels right to me. Hirani was afraid to say there was anything wrong with the Indian village, so we are left feeling like there is something wrong with the characters.
If I were to risk my life to move to a new place where I couldn’t even speak the language, possibly never returning home again, I would do that to save the lives of my loved ones. That’s, so far as I know, why economic migration happens. Your children are starving, your siblings are in danger, there is no future you can imagine in the place where you are living. So you balance the risks and take as many people with you as you can and try to reach safety. Or you go alone, offering yourself as a sacrifice in an effort to build an anchor for the rest of your family to reach towards.
Taapsee’s character is particularly frustrating. Because the REAL reasons are RIGHT THERE. She’s a strong independent woman, she doesn’t fit in this village, and this village will never let her earn enough money to support her family. She HAS to go somewhere else if she is to have any hope of thriving. The two men, less obvious, but it could still be reasonably explained for the same reasons young men always migrate. They are young, they are healthy, they are the most desirable labor force, and there is no economic future for them in their hometown. Better for their family to send them away, hope they can build something new and maybe send money home. But it doesn’t work if the family’s don’t even want them to go. And if they have futures there, at home. Why exactly should we even care about this trip abroad? I don’t think they should leave!
The movie comes alive during the moments that it can shake off that pretense. Once they are on the way, we can forget the weak reasons they wanted to leave, and just accept the minute by minute struggle to stay alive and reach their destination. The disillusionment with England, the shock of how hard it is to life without legal papers, that also feels real. And the pain of Shahrukh wanting to go home but staying for Taapsee, that too.
Shahrukh even has a great speech in court about how asylum should be granted for economic reasons. How immigration is a good healthy thing for any society, and he shouldn’t have to prove an immediate threat to his life to earn a place in a new country. Yes Shahrukh! I agree! And that’s what we are fighting for right now in my hometown, asylum and legal status for all the migrants so they can find lives they deserve.
And then it all goes away, like fairy dust, when Taapsee says she can’t go home with Sharukh because she doesn’t have a home. Meaning, she has to earn the money to pay back the moneylender so her parents can live in their family estate instead of an outhouse. Whoooooooooooooooooo cares! The outhouse looks really nice and clean and solid and warm, her family has food, Taapsee can go home to them and be with the man she loves and just get a job in the next city over instead of England. At least, based on what we have seen in this movie. Where India is a lovely place with lots of jobs, small families, loads of housing, etc. etc.
If only this movie had just been about a girl who desperately wanted/needed to get to England, and the man who fell in love with her and helped her get there, and then they were separated because he couldn’t live there and she couldn’t go home. That’s a real true story, that’s a story I can believe. Especially if we’d gotten to see some of Taapsee’s reward for staying in England, if we had seen that she managed to rent a place with her earnings, that she was proud to send money home, that she had reasons to stay beyond fuzzy abstractions. Just as Shahrukh had reasons to go home, to go back to a place where he belonged and had dignity and friendship and a place to be.
I guess my big take away from this fim is a surprised appreciation for other films that dealt with the same issues. Jab Taj Hain Jaan, for instance. I have many MANY issues with that film, but SRK’s immigrant storyline was perfect. He was in England because the only other option was the army and his mother didn’t want him to die. He busked and shoveled snow and picked up catering jobs and rented a tiny (but clean and cozy) room with a fellow immigrant. He had a strong support team of fellow immigrants, he was lonely but not alone, he had a hope for the future and a path forward. If Taapsee had had that in this movie, just a small room, a small hope, a reason to want to stay in England, a future for herself she couldn’t find back home, I could have believed it more easily.
Or, Laga Chunari Main Daag! Which wasn’t even international, it was just moving from village to city. Rani had a hard empty life, but she got to send money home, she got to feel she was building a future for her family, and the more her family was grateful, the more they demanded from her, the more she felt obligated to stay. In this movie, Taapsee doesn’t seem to have any idea what her family is doing with the money she sends them, doesn’t even know what their house looks like.
The movie I thought about the most was Pathemari, the Mammootty film. That is, in broad strokes, the same as this film. We go from the youthful illegal journey overseas through to the old age homesickness and feeling of isolation. Only that movie wasn’t afraid to think about how those years and years of living abroad would feel. This movie jumps from “blech, I’m begging on the streets but I want to stay in England” to “I’m stable and successful now but I want to go back to India”. Pathemari lives in the middle ground, the years of hearing news from home, feeling connected because you are paying for it all but disconnected because you never get to experience it, the constant growing pressure as your family grows and more and more people become your responsibility, the way your fellow migrants become your family of choice as you are isolated from your family at home, all of that.
I wish we had seen that in this movie. I wish we had seen Taapsee and Shahrukh live with the loneliness of one in one country and one in the other, the impossibility of finding a place in between, the fleeting meetings that make separation that much harder. That’s a line Hirani puts at the end, that the real “donkey” is the person who spends 25 years apart from the people they love. And it’s true. Only in this movie, it’s DUMB!
(Freakin’ Veer-Zaara not talking to each other stupid she’ll be happier married to someone else I just won’t say anything oh look now it’s been 25 years and my hand shakes slightly to show my age and she has a bad wig and oh wow we could have been together all along but isn’t it more tragic and satisfying this way with everything happening for no reason at all?)
BONUS DATA: Some really interesting stuff I realized when I read the credits! Kanika Dhillon was one of the scriptwriters, she also wrote Manmarziyaan and Haseena Dillruba, and she was a Red Chillies discovery (started as a script supervisor there, eventually got writing credit on Ra.One). Also I had forgotten that Taapsee was in Badla, produced by SRK. The other scriptwriter (besides Hirani) was Abhijat Joshi who wrote 3 Idiots and Sanju but also Kareeb! And Eklavya! Most importantly, he himself is an immigrant. He’s an academic who came to America for his masters and stayed, currently teaching at a school in Ohio. So my guess is that Hirani had the initial idea, Joshi helped flesh out the story and added a lot of the philosophy around immigration, Shahrukh got involved and suggested Kanika to flush out the script, Kanika and/or SRK brought in Taapsee, and it turned into a movie with a GREAT female character (something that Hirani doesn’t usually manage), some interesting philosophy, and a lot of cowardly dancing around the main points.
