Darr is a classic Yash Chopra movie to be sure, a staple of the era before Shah Rukh Khan became King Khan and when Juhi Chawla was just beginning her glorious star career. Darr is a particularly strange movie coming from director Yash Chopra; the man is famous for his passionate love tales, peppered with Hindustani wholesomeness and picturesque love songs. Darr is a love story (its subtitle actually claims that it is a "violent love story") but it's also a psychological thriller.
Well, a psychological thriller that runs 3 hours, has 3 love songs, co-stars Anupam Kher and Tanvi Azmi as comic relief and features two gratuitous dance numbers of both Holi and wedding. Nowadays this movie would probably run 130 minutes and have only some songs set in the background. Perhaps some famous actress would do a half-ironic item song sung by Sunidhi Chauhan.
Before I get into my analysis, let me just run through the plot.
Rahul (Khan) is a young college student, obsessively enamored of Kiren (Chawla), his classmate. He sings "Jaadu teri nazar" to her, which at first is romantic but becomes quite frightening as the film goes on. Kiren, on the other hand, is in love with naval officer Sunil (Sunny Deol, all brawn and little brains). Rahul calls and taunts and frightens Kiren, despite her begging to be left alone. When Rahul spots Kiren with Sunil, he goes off the deep end and his stalking of Kiren becomes more psychotic and dangerous. Kiren and Sunil continue with their marriage plans but try to fend off Rahul's attacks.
This being Bollywood in the early 90s, Rahul's fate is pretty much sealed by his first appearance. Sunny Deol, after his successes in Damini and Vishwatma, was a bigger star than Khan so you pretty much know who is going to be alive at the end of the movie.
Quite unsurprisingly, the 3 leads fit quite well into their roles as Hero, Damsel in Distress and Villain. Throughout the entire film, Kiren is in constant need of protection and her attempts to protect Sunil are met with declarations of his duty to protect her. "I don't care if I die, I just can't see you getting hurt" is a line she says several times. I can't decide if that line is the script keeping Kiren into a cage of helplessness or pointing out that Kiren isn't helpless but is forced to be by her macho husband. In their final scene before the intermission, Kiren offers to move away to both be free of Rahul's torments and protect Sunil from getting hurt again. He rejects the idea, keeping her in his protection but also in harm's way.
Kiren needs to escape Rahul's figurative clutches but does she also need to escape Sunil's literal ones?
I would expect this interpretation of Darr is a radical one. Sunny Deol is an action hero and his romance with Chawla is protrayed as romantic and innocent. Their two love songs ("Likha hai yeh inn hawaaon pe" and "Darwaaza bandh karlo") are frothy and sweet as opposed to the voyeuristic "Tu mere saamne," not to mention this psychosexual dream sequence:
Chopra definitely has us participate in Rahul's obsession with Kiren. It's a credit to Chawla's strength as an actress that Kiren has any real human personality. She's either being leered at or tormented by Rahul or running into the protective arms of Sunil. The poor woman doesn't even get to kill her torturer--that is the man's job. That would have been a great character moment for Kiren. Fine, she has to be protected but when it's kill or be killed, she can help herself. This ending of Sunil coming to her rescue after a (rather brutal) fight with Rahul is an almost cheap way for Deol to fulfill his duties as action star.
(Rumor has it that Aamir Khan was offered the part of Rahul but objected to the fact that Sunil, not Kiren, kills Rahul. I don't know how that true that is because it's an almost 20 year old rumor I read on an IMDb message board but I'd sooner believe it than doubt it.)
Let's not forget the fact that Sunil has a habit of scaring Kiren. First he jumps out of her closet. But then later he hides in the pool and grabs her ankle as she tries to get out. This second scene is really disturbing because it goes on for a long time. We are really meant to think Rahul is attacking her.
Is Sunil trying to scare Kiren into submission? The "star constraints" (what I call it when an actor's status foreshadows their fate in the movie) don't really allow for a full exploration of this idea. We're supposed to feel reassured by Sunil's protections;.
But I can't shake off the feeling that Kiren is unfortunately stuck between a "Rukh" and a hard body. Yash Chopra, though he never really was a true feminist director, always told very fascinating female stories like Chandni, Lamhe and Dil To Pagal Hai (his most feminist film, kind of). Even Veer-Zaara is very woman-oriented.
After a while, Darr turns into a tug-of-war between Rahul and Sunil with Kiren stuck in the middle; this is especially true once Sunil figures out that the guy he sort of became friends with is actually Rahul pretending not to be crazy. Kiren doesn't even get to piece together that Rahul is the stalker! It bears repeating that the only reason Kiren resembles a human being at all is because Juhi Chawla breathes life into all her scenes.
I should mention that I'm not at all surprised that a psychological thriller from 1990s Bollywood is so masculine. Darr still remains one of that era's most daring films and it is very successful in establishing a sense of dread and paranoia even when indulging in a dance number like this:
You just know Kiren's marital bliss is not long for the world.
I liked Darr quite a bit, even with its old-school gender politics. I guess I was hoping that this movie, already such a game-changer for Bollywood, would raise the bar and allow its heroine to be, well, more heroic than usual.
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