I love it when a film is good both in streaming and off streaming. Not just good, but encouraging you to see it a different way and find different things. I found something new watching Jawan streaming that I had missed in all 4 of my theatrical watches.
I wish I could remember who said this, I know it wasn’t me because I remember thinking “wow that’s cool”, but someone on the blog said that every Shahrukh movie is a love story, and Chak De India is a love story between Shahrukh and India. And “Maula Mere Lele Meri Jaan” is one of his greatest love songs.
Watching Jawan on my TV, focusing on faces instead of the whole big screen and with better subtitles and all those things, I suddenly realized that Jawan is a love story too, a love story between parent and child.
Son Shahrukh cares more about winning the love of his father than anything else. He restrains himself, he stays task focused, but that deep inner yearning is where you can see the most emotion on his face. Meanwhile Suji, the little girl, is falling in love with her new “Papa” Shahrukh. There’s a reason (besides ADORABLE) she goes to the first meeting. She is the one who needs to find love, and be loved, and it is their bond that has to start.
The heart of the film, the most meaningful part, is the Deepika story of raising her son knowing she would be leaving him. It’s a tragic love story and, like many tragic Indian love stories, it ends with someone else stepping in to fill the role while knowing they can never really fill it. Kaveri Amma adopting SRK is the same as, in other movies, the second wife who swears to try to keep her husband happy despite knowing he will always truly love his first wife.
Maybe this is why Nayanthara’s character feels a little empty? Her main motivation is not a parent-child one. It is for the personal life/romance parts of the film, but not her at work life which is what we see most. Everything Shahrukh does, every moment of the film, is motivated by parent child love. Even Vijay, our villain, that is the thread he pulls. He is drawn in originally by a threat to his child, and continues because of the death of his brother-who-is-like-his-child. But Nayanthara, it isn’t until the last third that she finds her motivation by taking over from “Lakshmi”, the mother who joined Shahrukh’s team to avenge her children.
Heck, way at the beginning, we see a mother and son rescue Shahrukh, and then the two of them try to protect each other from the raiders. At the train hijack, when he captures the cop and asks who he loves most, the cop says “my mother”. And on and on and on.
The one time erotic man-woman love is centered is in the Deepika-Shahrukh love story. But her love song with her son does a lovely job of drawing that man-woman bond into the parent-child bond. In other films, the “my husband is dead but look, a kid!” storyline seems as though it just replaces the husband with a child. Or says “I love my child extra because I don’t have my husband”. But in this one, we see Deepika both happy and sad with her memories of Shahrukh. And she remembers him not in a “my son does something that reminds me of my husband” way, but more just flashes of past moments as she plays with her son. It gave me the very specific feeling of “I wish my co-parent was here to be part of this family and parenting journey with me”. Their love story should have continued to a new phase, where they work together to focus on their child and raise him with a combination of their personalities and abilities. That is what she is missing, that person who should be there to love her son with her.
And that is the completion of the Daddy SRK storyline. He has to remember his life, remember his wife, and then love their son. Give their son the love Deepika wanted him to give, knew he would give if only he was there.
