At the risk of sounding corny, anything that’s perfect cannot be repeated. Be it your first crush or Sairat. Now that the Nagraj Manjule film is hoisted on the pedestal, this writer can go ahead and dive into this SEO minefield.
(This piece is best read if you’ve seen both the films. No big spoilers ahead but it delves into some specifics.)
After Sairat became a massive hit, the word ‘zingaat’ was widely used as an adjective and a verb to denote unrestrained happiness. Does it apply to Dhadak as well?
An adaptation is usually judged based on whether or not the film accurately recreates its source.
But a film adaptation does not mandate a frame-by-frame replica. It is one of the many possible readings of the source. It’s about how a filmmaker takes a story and makes it her/his own. The ‘Dharma’ and the ‘Phantom’ worlds will yield different tellings of the same story.
Without getting too cerebral about fidelity criticism, suffice to say that Dhadak may not live up to the phenomenon of Sairat but it’s a faithful rendition of the soul of Sairat. It may struggle with nuances, reluctant to let go off the mainstream flourishes, but does not whitewash the unsavoury reality of caste that’s at the heart of the original film.
A doomed love story unfolding in the interiors of Maharashtra, Sairat tells the story of Archi (Rinku Rajguru), the indulged and plucky daughter of a rich political kingpin and Parshya (Akash Thosar), a fisherman’s son, from the Pardhi community, living in a Dalit ghetto. Shashank Khaitan locates the story in Rajasthan. The hinterlands of Maharashtra (Solapur), replete with sugarcane fields and barren trees are traded in favour of the step-wells and the grandeur of Udaipur. Here Madhukar (Ishaan Khatter) is the son of a small restaurant owner and Parthavi (Janhvi Kapoor), the daughter of a hotelier and politician.
Not Mis-‘Caste’
Critics and opinion pieces may have waxed eloquent about how Sairat grapples with casteism. But the film didn’t scream ‘caste’ from the rooftops. Manjule instead made it a subliminal theme. His craft exuded his lived-in sensibilities. He employed a dreamy narrative to set us up. Drawing us in with promises of cliched romantic sagas in the first half, it pulled the carpet from under our feet to make us confront the realities that were missing in films like QSQT or Saathiya in the second half. Slow motion sequences are replaced by poignant silences and a grim realism takes over.
Manjule uses familiar Bollywood tropes like the construct of star-crossed lovers to reel us in only to deliver the gut punch in the second half, when the gloves are off.
There’s a specific mention of ‘Ucchi Jaati’ in Dhadak, a warning that’s pivotal. A baby step for Bollywood. It does not shy away from exploring the consequences of casteism and does not fail to weave in scenes from the original that highlight the privilege that comes with a higher caste and how honour is tethered to a woman.
Dhadak employs the duality in terms of its tone too, where the gritty truth unfurls in the second half. But it plays safe and only moderately steps out of its sanitised world. Where the action moves to the slums and real locations in Sairat, the one room house in Kolkata looks a tad like a set. Even Zingaat in Dhadak is too choreographed to be untamed and impromptu.
That said, this may be one of the least glamorous films to come out of the Dharma world, yet.
Manjule chanced upon Rinku Rajguru and Akash Thosar in the unlikeliest of places. When Thosar was a fledgling wrestler, a random coincidence led to Manjule being shown his photograph on a railway station. Rajguru on the other hand was starry-eyed while accompanying her mother to see a “film shooting” in Akluj village of Solapur. She caught Manjule’s eye and an audition followed. The duo that came out of nowhere became subjects of adulation, overnight. Their obscurity lent the film the realism that the script demanded. The lead pair of Dhadak on the other hand, acquired a celeb status even before their film released.
Archi vs Parthavi; Madhu vs Parshya
If the first half of Sairat were a Bhai film, Archi would be Salman Khan in her swag. Manjule’s portrayal of Archi dismantles not only the caste hierarchy but our perceptions of a conventional female protagonist. He even reportedly asked Rajguru to pile on a few kilos to look convincing. Though the lead pair speaks in a local dialect in both the films, it’s Janhvi’s elaborate costumes - the bandhini and mirror work in the first half and her airbrushed face that fails to endear us the way Archi’s raw charm does.
In many ways, Sairat is more of a heroine’s quest than the hero’s. She rides a tractor and is even the knight in shining armour to Parshya. While Parthavi is also depicted as a badass upper-caste brat in the film, she falls short when it comes to emoting female desire like Archi does (case in point - the telling well scene).
Sairat celebrates the female gaze with its classroom scene. Parshya may be smitten by Archi but it’s Archi who woos him. Instead of infusing Parthavi with unnecessary and at times annoying sass, this subversion would have lent more appeal to her character.
As for the performances, it may take a while for Janhvi to shed the hangover of her stardom for grimy roles. She has a stellar screen presence. Though laboured, her performance is full of surprises and holds possibilities to mine. But Ishaan comes very close to nailing the small-town, agile awkwardness of Parshya. Both hold their own in the climax scene.
Sridhar Watsar as Madhu’s BFF is as disarming as Langdya in Sairat.
The Gut-Wrenching Climax
The litmus test is the climax. I knew what was in store while it unfolded on screen but there was still a dull thud in my chest. In a love story if you find yourself invested in the lead couple, in the end, the love story has worked for you. Though not as gut-wrenching as Sairat’s climax, the effect of which lingered for a long time, the end didn’t fail to make me feel heavy-hearted.
Expect a twist in the end, a departure from the original. While one is left wondering about the re-imagining of the end, it hints at the caste politics of Rajasthan.
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