scorecardresearch
Friday, Mar 29, 2024
Advertisement
Premium

RHTDM turns 20: How Dia Mirza, R Madhavan film showed Bollywood’s love for the brash and abusive hero

Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein released 20 years ago. The Dia Mirza, R Madhavan and Saif Ali Khan film celebrated all the problematic tropes that Bollywood falls prey to, including stalking and abusive behaviour.

MadhavanRehna Hai Terre Dil Mein completes 20 years today (Photo: YouTube)

In Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein, Dia Mirza’s character Reena is faced with a peculiar predicament. She has to choose between two men: One is Maddy (played by R Madhavan), who stalked her and pretended to be her fiancé for five days and who also broke into her fiance’s house and threatened his parents, and the other, her actual fiancé (Saif Ali Khan), a calm, cool-headed person, whom she barely knows.

While for the rest of us the choice is clear as day, Reena decides to go with Maddy. As she shyly tells him at the airport at the end of the movie, dressed in bridal finery, “Tumhari harkatein mujhe hasati hain (Your antics make me laugh). It’s still a mystery which part of stalking and thuggish behaviour made Reena laugh, but obviously, it did — enough for her to decide that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.

It has been 20 years since Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein released. It was the Hindi remake of the Tamil film Minnale, which had starred Madhavan, Abbas, and Reema. While Minnale enjoyed commercial success and was praised, Rehna Hai Terre Dil Mein didn’t share the same luck at the box office initially, but went on to become a ‘cult classic’. Apart from the difference in cast members, and maybe a song or two, the storyline of both the films are the same: Man falls in love with a girl at first sight, stalks her, pretends to be her fiancé, and then girl chooses him at the end. This is early 2000’s, so a premise like this is not really surprising, considering that the audience had cheered on David Dhawan’s films, where a woman tries to woo her cheating husband back, or when a man’s hand tingles to make an inappropriate move on a woman.

Advertisement

Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein and Minnale were probably seen as soulful romantic comedies, where a man could just do anything to get the love of his life. Bollywood has normalised this trope for years now, and has been struggling to break away from this familiar comfort zone, that’s ridden with misogyny. Dia had accepted that the film was sexist a few years ago. “People were writing, thinking and making sexist cinema and I was a part of these stories… Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein has sexism in it… I was acting with these people. I was working with these people. It’s crazy,” she had said.

In Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein, Maddy actually threatens Reena with a troubling dialogue, “Paanch din, main tera kuch bhi kar sakta tha, aur tum mana nahin karti (5 days, I could have had my way with you and you wouldn’t have said no).” A teary Reena tells him that she never wants to see him again, only to change her mind at the wedding mandap itself. What’s even more ironic is that the film struggled to make the audience empathise with Maddy, who sits and cries by the sea with his fellow thug-friends. Sub-text: His heart has been broken, and women are a curse. Saif’s Rajeev tells Maddy during the final airport scene, “You could have broken my face that day, but you didn’t. And I could have broken your heart by marrying Reena, but I didn’t.” Since when did not destroying someone’s face in a car-park become the standard for measuring the magnanimity of a person? But in the RHTDM-Verse, it is.

Festive offer

If the film was remade today, a more realistic premise being Reena looking up Facebook and finding out what her fiancé looks like, instead of getting phished. Or maybe, her not being with either of the men, because while one is a thug, she barely knows the other. Perhaps, this time we could find out what Reena’s career was, and did she do anything else apart from waiting to be set up for an arranged marriage.

But we digress. 20 years on, would the audience have appreciated RHTDM, had it released today?  The ideal answer is obviously no, because there has been much examination and discourse on Bollywood glorifying stalking, abuse as well as the habit of reducing the woman’s role to just being a trophy for the man to nab. Yet, the answer to the question isn’t so simple. While there has been a noted herculean struggle to abandon the toxic tropes of 90’s, many Bollywood filmmakers still employ the same themes in seemingly different contexts, but the end result is always the same.

Advertisement

After all, Shahid Kapoor’s 2019 film Kabir Singh, a remake of Arjun Reddy, saw the woman being treated with less dignity than a piece of property, as the hero raged on in a violent haze, and then underwent a lukewarm redemption to be accepted by the woman at the end of the film. Kabir Singh saw outrage and fury on all social media platforms, and the actors, Shahid and Kiara Advani defended it to the heavens, trying to explain the ‘angry, rebellious’ man image. Men will be men, that’s what echoed loud and clear.

The film continued raking in money, and earned more than Rs 300 crore. Arjun Reddy has spawned more remakes, because the idea of the angry, brash, abusive man ‘who will do anything for his love’ is an idea that a certain section of the audience subscribes to, and no amount of discourse on social media will change that. Not now, at least.

Rehna Hai Terre Dil Mein is a ‘cult classic’ today. Indeed, it does mark a milestone in the slew of problematic films over the years that promote all the toxic tropes of a romance.

Click for more updates and latest Bollywood news along with Entertainment updates. Also get latest news and top headlines from India and around the world at The Indian Express.

First uploaded on: 19-10-2021 at 09:14 IST
Latest Comment
Post Comment
Read Comments
Advertisement
shorts
Maguntas
Political PulseUpdated: March 29, 2024 05:19 IST

Away from the national capital’s courtroom where the case against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is playing out, two key figures embroiled in the excise policy case – four-time MP Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy and his son Raghava Magunta Reddy – are busy campaigning for BJP ally Telugu Desam Party (TDP)

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
close