Bollywood loves its remakes, so I often find myself watching a remake of a Western movie that I haven’t actually seen. Gudgudee (1997) is the first movie that made me feel bad about that; it’s a remake of The Seven Year Itch, and admitting you’ve never seen The Seven Year Itch is almost as bad as admitting you’ve never actually seen Casablanca. (Note: I’ve never actually seen Casablanca.)
Anupam Kher, India’s finest portrayer of befuddled middle-aged men, plays Ajay Prasad, a befuddled middle aged man. Ajay is happily married to Sunita (Pratibha Lonkar), and they have a young son, Raja (Master Wajid.) Ajay is pleasant loyal, loving, a bit absent minded, and more than a little dull, though he has an active imagination. Sunita is quite happy to nag him about smoking, drinking, and diet, but when he leaves town to attend a wedding by himself, spending three days amidst the notorious loose women of Bombay, she is unconcerned.
The groom’s family put Ajay up in a very nice apartment, with air conditioning in every room. The apartment also comes with a next door neighbor, a beautiful model and aspiring actress (Pratibha Sinha, doing a fantastic Madhuri Dixit impression.) She isn’t actually named on screen until the very end of the film, and the moment of naming is a significant character point of character development, but I don’t want to keep typing “beautiful model and aspiring actress” over and over, so I’ll use her name. Chandni. Her name is Chandni.
Ajay and Chandni quickly hit it off; she’s a beautiful, charming, and affectionate young woman, and he’s a very nice man who has a working air conditioner. It isn’t long before Ajay’s imagination is working overtime. She feels comfortable around him specifically because he’s a married man and therefore safe, and he mistakes that comfort for romantic interest. He’s very conflicted about this - she’s a very beautiful girl, the (imagined) attention is very flattering, and a part of him wants to be the suave, sexy bad boy for once. On the other hand, he loves his wife, and is horrified by the idea of betraying her.
That inner conflict is part of the reason why Gudgudee (a comedy about adulterous yearnings) didn’t bother me in the same way as Charli Chaplin (a comedy about adulterous yearnings) did. It also helps that Ajay does not spend the entire film emotionally blackmailing his friends into helping him lie to his wife, and Sunita is never subjected to a lecture about how it’s a woman’s responsibility to keep her husband from straying by being jealous but not too jealous.
The Seven Year Itch was originally a stage play, and Gudgudee feels very stagey; much of the film consists of two people having long conversations in an enclosed space, though they occasionally leave the apartment. Chandni does not, however, at any point, stand over a subway grate. As far as I can tell, the film otherwise follows its Hollywood inspiration very closely. I wonder about the ending, however; Gudgudee ends on a very sweet note, with Chandni and Ajay both changed by the experience, parting with a heightened appreciation of their selves and their respective lives. That doesn’t really seem like Billy Wilder to me.
Anupam Kher, India’s finest portrayer of befuddled middle-aged men, plays Ajay Prasad, a befuddled middle aged man. Ajay is happily married to Sunita (Pratibha Lonkar), and they have a young son, Raja (Master Wajid.) Ajay is pleasant loyal, loving, a bit absent minded, and more than a little dull, though he has an active imagination. Sunita is quite happy to nag him about smoking, drinking, and diet, but when he leaves town to attend a wedding by himself, spending three days amidst the notorious loose women of Bombay, she is unconcerned.
The groom’s family put Ajay up in a very nice apartment, with air conditioning in every room. The apartment also comes with a next door neighbor, a beautiful model and aspiring actress (Pratibha Sinha, doing a fantastic Madhuri Dixit impression.) She isn’t actually named on screen until the very end of the film, and the moment of naming is a significant character point of character development, but I don’t want to keep typing “beautiful model and aspiring actress” over and over, so I’ll use her name. Chandni. Her name is Chandni.
Ajay and Chandni quickly hit it off; she’s a beautiful, charming, and affectionate young woman, and he’s a very nice man who has a working air conditioner. It isn’t long before Ajay’s imagination is working overtime. She feels comfortable around him specifically because he’s a married man and therefore safe, and he mistakes that comfort for romantic interest. He’s very conflicted about this - she’s a very beautiful girl, the (imagined) attention is very flattering, and a part of him wants to be the suave, sexy bad boy for once. On the other hand, he loves his wife, and is horrified by the idea of betraying her.
That inner conflict is part of the reason why Gudgudee (a comedy about adulterous yearnings) didn’t bother me in the same way as Charli Chaplin (a comedy about adulterous yearnings) did. It also helps that Ajay does not spend the entire film emotionally blackmailing his friends into helping him lie to his wife, and Sunita is never subjected to a lecture about how it’s a woman’s responsibility to keep her husband from straying by being jealous but not too jealous.
The Seven Year Itch was originally a stage play, and Gudgudee feels very stagey; much of the film consists of two people having long conversations in an enclosed space, though they occasionally leave the apartment. Chandni does not, however, at any point, stand over a subway grate. As far as I can tell, the film otherwise follows its Hollywood inspiration very closely. I wonder about the ending, however; Gudgudee ends on a very sweet note, with Chandni and Ajay both changed by the experience, parting with a heightened appreciation of their selves and their respective lives. That doesn’t really seem like Billy Wilder to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment