Cinema: Kuch Kuch Kyon Hota hai

Riding the wave of trendy, feel-good movies with a traditional core, the year's biggest blockbuster wows audiences at home and abroad.

It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you tap your feet. It puts a lump in your throat. And it takes you to a never-never land of brand names and pretty faces and places from which poverty, pollution and villains have been exiled: real India only makes a guest appearance here. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (KKHH) is the perfect fairytale for the '90s. And the year's biggest blockbuster. It had to happen. Kuch kuch to hona hi tha.

The film by an unknown 26-year-old, Karan Johar, blew in like a tornado from nowhere, knocking down in its wake all other films this year. According to the trade journal Film Information, distributors across the country stand to rake in a profit of Rs 10-12 crore in five weeks of the film's release. It is now speeding towards the position of the second biggest grosser after Hum Aapke Hain Koun. A slot now shared by Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge (DDLJ) and Raja Hindustani: both the films have made Rs 42-43 crore profit each, according to industry sources. KKHH can't afford to run out of breath if it has to reach the magic sum of Rs 50 crore with which HAHK rewrote box-office history.

"The language has
a new timbre"

With the surprise success of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the 26-year-old debutant director Karan Johar is in Bollywood's top league. He spoke to senior correspondent Nandita Chowdhury about his concerns and style. Excerpts:

On KKHH: HAHK showed a great happy family. KKHH was more of a story. I wanted to see Shah Rukh Khan as a father since that's the only thing that would be different. The language has a new timbre, characters talk like normal friends or college couples of the '90s.

On the inspiration from Yash Chopra: The look of the film, the atmosphere, the costumes, the style. It's all Yash Chopra. There's also a strong sense of heroine projection. I like heroine-oriented films where the man has a sensitive side to him.

On the flavour of youth: The cinematic concept of colleges in India is very weak. I wanted to make it more dreamy. The outdoors were shot in Mauritius, interiors on the sets. I took some cinematic liberties to prove my point, but I had a lot of fun making KKHH. DDLJ is the reason why KKHH exists, so it will always be more special to me.

Even more significant is its success in the overseas market: it is the biggest Hindi film hit ever in the UK. The film's gross takings in the first five weeks in the UK is a record -- 1.2 million (Rs 8.5 crore). It also figured among the top 10 films in the country, in much the same neighbourhood as two of the much talked about films of the year: Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth and Angad Paul's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It is also the first Hindi film to be screened -- that too to a full house -- at Leicester Square's Empire Theatre. The upbeat, breezy score by Jatin Lalit has also been a resounding success. "It is strong on melodies, has simple hooklines and catch phrases and is easy to sing along," says Vijay Singh, managing director, Sony Music, India, of their first foray into the world of Hindi film music. And in three months the company estimates it has sold about 40 lakh copies, making it the biggest hit of the year. Nearly three lakh units are estimated to have been sold outside India, which makes it this year's largest seller abroad. "If you see a good movie, you want to relive a part of the emotions you've felt, you want to own a part of the film," says Singh. And a music album helps in taking the film back home, he feels.

The songs don't just sound good but look great, complete with Farah Khan's stylish choreography, picture postcard locations and the hi-gloss MTV-style packaging. No wonder, the song clips have been the ideal promos. The title number, imaginatively shot with the three lead players in the Scottish Highlands, has been leading them to the hall.

Success in the time of extortion can also be measured by the level of jitters it invokes in its makers. Johar slipped away to Europe after a reported ransom demand. Yash Chopra, the producer-director who has the film's overseas and Mumbai rights, has stepped up the security and has his eyes glued to the closed circuit television in his office. Almost as significant as the sweet sound of the non-stop ringing of the cash registers is the film's instant cult status and its conversion, however transient, into a style guide for the teeny boppers and young at heart. KKHH marks the arrival of Tommy Hilfiger into the Indian yuppie's wardrobe. The international upmarket designer label, the ultimate in cool, is all over Janpath in Delhi and Linking Road in Mumbai. The headband, Kajol's trademark for the first half of the film, also gains respectability and rescue from behenji land. And the bounce of the basketball can be heard in many a backyard.

What is all the fuss about? It's a simple enough tale: boy meets girl, mostly over a basketball game, and fall in, well, friendship. In walks a sexy Veronica-like creature and steals his heart. And a wedding and a funeral later, the friends finally meet the way fate meant them to.

The secret of its sweet success could well be the fact that KKHH is "100 per cent cynicism free", and set in a perfect, sanitised world. "They are creating a world where everyone is happy and wonderful and nice and good. They are creating a new kind of form where the villain is dispensed with altogether," says film editor Renu Saluja. All the conflicts are also internalised. In these films the hero and the heroine seem to be sorting out their own minds: what is love, friendship and commitment. "Circumstances are the biggest villains, which is what happens in life," justifies Johar. There is not even the usual rich girl-poor boy scenario. Nobody is poor. "These days every second film is a fairytale, saccharine sweet ... set in a college canteen where pink heart-shaped balloons are floating in the air," says writer Sanjay Chhel who makes his directorial debut with Khubsoorat.

But candyfloss alone does not explain the peculiar tug of this film, which has appealed to both the young and the old, enchanting both the NRI (non-resident Indian) and NRI (Resident Non-Indian) who inhabit urban, urbane Young India. The film's trump card is really the traditional heart which beats in a western body. In other words, joota may be Japani but dil has to be Hindustani.

If the cinema of the '80s belonged to the biceped battering ram of an angry young man, the '90s have been taken over by a young, westernised, dandified Indian for whom New York is as close as the street outside but whose soul remains resolutely Indian. And KKHH is riding on the crest of this wave. But it's not the only one. Ghulam and Satya may have been the exceptions to the rule: the other big hits this year have played out the same "trendy-traditional" formula. Like Pyar To Hona Hi Tha, Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya and Jab Pyar Kisise Hota Hai. "It's typical of our society where dating and dowry deaths co-exist," says novelist and script-writer Manohar Shyam Joshi.

It is this easy straddling across two worlds which explains the success of the KKHH genre of films. It also shows that perhaps conservatism has not yet done the vanishing act from modern India. So the hero, Shah Rukh, may wear a chain spelling out COOL but he also visits a temple every week. The sexy, mini-skirted, Oxford-educated Tina, played by Rani Mukherjee, might strum the guitar with felicity but can also sing Om Jai Jagadeesh Hare with equal ease. And a free-spirited Kajol, alias Anjali, gets willingly tamed into a submissive picture of femininity. Sociologist Shiv Vishwanathan of Delhi's Centre for the Study of Developing Societies views the trend as "a new merging of two polarities, almost like saying that India can have the best of both the worlds". The typical rebellion of the youth has vanished. There's no need. "What they may rebel for is easily available at the supermarket across the street," adds Vishwanathan.

There is another significant shift in the films of the late '90s which KKHH encapsulates. Life here unfolds in a cocoon called St Xavier's College. No, not that hallowed campus in Mumbai but a Riverdale High lookalike lifted straight from Archies comics. We are living the American dream. The timepass here is basketball, not cricket, with the pom-pom girls cheering on. The students play beachball in Mauritius, Baywatch style. They wear international designer labels from DKNY to Gap. And throw in a "Yo" or a "Dude" in every other sentence. Johar admits his idea was to show a peppy, dream college. "No colleges in Mumbai are like that and no students dress up like that," he admits. And what about studies, exams, competition and career? Well, that's a different story. Kuch Kuch is a success both at home and overseas because it is the perfect meeting point of an urban Indian's aspirations and an nri's nostalgia. And with a market worth Rs 25-30 crore it makes sense to plug in the overseas viewer. "These films are quite like a Manoj Kumar in search of his bharat," says media critic Sudheesh Pachauri. They seem to say to the displaced that you can still be rooted.

At the end of the day modernity and gloss is the name of the game because the makers themselves relate to it. It's the cinema of the young, by the young, and mostly for the young. Most of the directors are 20-something brats who hold as much clout in the industry today as a Subhash Ghai or Yash Chopra. "Ab to youngsters ka zamana hai (This is the age of the youngsters)," declares Komal Nahata, editor, Film Information. The emerging aesthetic is look-good, feel-good. The treatment becomes as important as the script. KKHH's success then owes as much to Johar's direction as to art director Sharmishtha Roy's sets, designer and stylist Manish Malhotra's clothes and choreographer Farah Khan's dance direction. "Manish and I shopped for 12 days in London. I make no bones about the fact that I wanted to show a Polo Sport, a Ralph Lauren or a DKNY, show them loud," says Johar. But only razzmatazz does not help. "One has to ensure that one makes an entertaining film and get the emotions right. You can't have anything that fools around with Indian sentiments," says Sohail Khan, director of Pyar Kiya ...

But not everyone is impressed and some have dismissed films such as KKHH as regressive, cosmetic films which lacks substance. "They are looking at the world with rose-tinted eyes. It is a new era of optimism on celluloid. Call it escapist but it is working," says script writer Anjum Rajabali. The idea, clearly, is to watch it, enjoy it and forget it. "Cinema is a release for the common man. Show him reality once or twice but he is not going to come to the cinema to see reality all the time," argues Johar.

Others seem to share the sentiments. Several similar city-centric, upmarket films are in the pipeline. Mansoor Khan has a Josh up his sleeve, a West Side Story set in Goa. Rishi Kapoor is making his directorial debut with Aa Ab Laut Chalen, a love story played out against a Manhattan backdrop. Sohail is all set to launch Hello Brother, "a yuppie film in which the values remain intact". Others are waiting with bated breath to see whether they'll hit the bull's eye. After all that'll decide whether Hindi cinema chooses to remain American-Indian in the 21st century. Meanwhile, India will take Manhattan.