2 States: The Contrarian View

I admit I am not a great fan of Hindi Movies, and having watched only a handful of them my experience with Hindi movies is limited.  I liked a few of them though, especially the emotional dramas from the black and white era, such as Seema and Haryali Aur Rastha, and the Raj Kapoor knock-offs of the Charlie Chaplin movies.  The Raj Kapoor versions, I felt, were more interesting than the original. May be that’s a cultural thing.

I have never been able to sit through the five most popular types of Hindi movies: 

1. The siblings separated at birth

2. The father-son conflict (often includes brother vs. brother)

3. The reincarnated woman-snake story

4. The story of vengeance against three/four villains a la the Count of Monte Christo

5. The ever popular one where the story begins with the killing of the hero's parents by the villain(s) and the hero growing up to take revenge.

The last type is often grafted on to the first type to increase the emotional quotient.

In am aware that many of the better, more enjoyable movies in Hindi are either remakes of successful films from other Indian languages in which more accomplished film cultures flourish, or knock-offs of foreign movies (example Beja Fry  the curry version of Le Dîner de Cons). A casual survey will show that Hindi films always had a tradition of borrowing its muse from Hollywood. Sometimes I am just curious to find out how well the rip-off works and end up watching the movie. These are often older movies like Kati Patang, the adaptaion of No Man of Her Own  which was based on the cult noir novel I Married a Dead Man by Cornell Woolrich (my favorite suspense writer).

I had recently watched the Tamil romantic movie ‘Nee Thane En Pon Vasantham’ (You Are My Golden Spring) and had liked it. The film, slow and sure-footed, had the subtlety of underplayed emotions, sophisticated but believable characters, and a thread of longing and yearning running through the film. Is this the new trend in Indian movies? So it seemed, and when a friend suggested I check out the new Hindi block-buster ‘2 States’, I succumbed to the temptation. The contrast between the two movies was drastic.

Before I go on, I must  pause and praise two elements in 2 States that stood out. The incredible acting by Amrita Singh (what a transformation from Betab to this!), and the coruscating dream-like visage of Alia Bhatt in a Saree.

I thought I was appalled by the movie's immaturity, the cardboard-like lead characters, and the plastic props in place of supporting characters (how did Revathi agree to this humiliation?). The in-your-face shallowness of the script and its unabashedly kitschy mounting, the two-dimensional characters whose mental and emotional growths seem to have stuck somewhere in pre-pubescence, the incredibly brazen stereotyping (especially of the Tamils), and a male lead with a wooden face on which even a stray accidental molecule of emotion has to struggle to maintain its footing, cried out for an abysmal rating for the movie. 

Then, think again.

This is What We Are

Think about us.  We might have high opinions (often misplaced) about our sophistication, behavior, intelligence, and intellect, but is that the real us?  In real life aren’t we indeed two-dimensional characters like the crudely wrought protagonists of 2 States, who lack intellectual depth or sophistication in the conduct of our daily life?

People are not mature or sophisticated. Nor are they subtle.

That sounds a very harsh judgment but think back, for example, about how we behaved when we (those of us who) were in love.  We exchanged puerile one-liners when we wooed, and generally behaved like pre-pubescent kids. Spoke to each other in stilted clichés ('Are you hitting on me?'). Our nods to the fashionable were 'going steady' and the ultimate statement of modernity a contrived sexual conquest. To our callow minds these were not artificial addenda to everyday life, but symptoms of sophistication, our homage to the in-thing. Most of us, not unlike the two cardboard lovers in this movie, existed on a low level of psychological maturity, intellectual growth, and emotional intelligence.

Our minds and behavior did not grow beyond the early teen’s even when we attended prestigious adult institutions, like an IIM in the movie. We will later take the stunted growth to Harvard, if possible. We looked at the world through stereotypes, and the jokes we laughed at were ethnic slurs or those that reinforced the stereotypes in our yet (nay, ever) immature minds, and we continue to delude ourselves that the victims too should enjoy the jokes.  In short, we were rather uninteresting, unsophisticated.  Doesn't, then, the lead pair of this movie appear less improbable and ridiculous? 

The film is based on Chetan Bhagat’s novel of the same name, which according to the author is autobiographical.  Chetan Bhagat’s style is unabashedly pulp, pulp kneaded and flattened with a heavy hand, and he revels in it, not a bad thing in itself considering the success he has had with it so far. We should believe him if he owns up the film as a true depiction of his love, wooing, and marriage. The author is to be appreciated, because it needs courage and humility to own up something that uninteresting and uninspiring, a slice of humdrum love life in the Flatland.

A Flatland it is, inhabited by two-dimensional beings going through the motions of their dull lives and unimaginative loves spouting one-liners, surrounded by a supporting cast of papier-mâché figurines stuck on props ever ready to fill in with actions expected of the stereotypes on demand. A nod to Karnataka Sangeetam here, a Balle Balle there, and throw in a Kancheepuram saree in between. We are caricatures on the pages of pulp.

Considering the honesty in all that I rate 2 States very, very high.