The recently released trailer of BAREILLY KI BARFI directed by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari (of NIL BATTEY SANNATA fame), featuring Kriti Sanon, Rajkummar Rao and Ayushmann Khurana, does have an appeal due to its realistic presentation, language and local flavour. But at the same time, it also reveals the film’s actual subject/storyline reminding you of a cult musical hit released in 1991 titled SAAJAN.
Based on one of the most favourite and regularly repeated cliched formula of Hindi films, SAAJAN (directed by Lawrence D’Souza) yet again revolved around a love-triangle with reference of poetry or shayri. However the film became a big success due to its outstanding melodious music, impressive performances and the three leading stars Madhuri Dixit, Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan coming together for the first time in a project having their own fan following.
SAAJAN’s basic plot had Sanjay Dutt playing a poet (writing under a pen-name of Sagar) and Madhuri Dixit falling in love with his fictional identity as his picture is not there on his published books. Sanjay asks Salman to pose as Sagar and meet her, who eventually also falls in love with Madhuri creating a confusing love triangle leading to further complications.
In BAREILLY KI BARFI too (as disclosed in the trailer), Kriti gets interested in the writer of a book who is Rajkummar Rao and Ayushmann decides to play a trick threatening Rao to first be friendly with Kriti and then ditch her creating a potential opportunity for himself. As expected Rao too falls in love with Kriti playing the instructed game and then revolts against Ayushmann resulting in a similar kind of love-triangle as seen in SAAJAN, which was more inclined towards the angle of friendship and an emotional sacrifice (Hope the present film has much more than what has already been revealed in the trailer).
As reported in TOI, BAREILLY KI BARFI is based upon a French book, titled ‘Ingredients of Love’. Interestingly SAAJAN also had a hidden French connection with its plot similar to more than a century old French play ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’, that was later adapted for a film several times in the west and was an inspiration for a Tamil musical too, called DUET (1994).
Incidentally SAPNAY (1997/MINSARA KANAVU in Tamil) featuring Kajol, Arvind Swamy and Prabhudeva also had an identical plot and one might recall many other closely related Hindi films too where a third person is asked or hired to impress the leading lady unintentionally creating a love-triangle. As a matter of fact this always has been the most common feature of our romantic films, also seen in Shah Rukh Khan’s YES BOSS. And even Raj Kapoor initially requested Rajendra Kumar to convey his love to Vyjayanthimala as a dear friend in SANGAM unaware of Kumar’s undisclosed intentions.
As it seems BAREILLY KI BARFI will certainly be more about the local lingo, the comic feel, witty dialogues and a pleasant, entertaining ambience specifically targeting the young audience. But the point is, why we are we so uninterested in trying new stories in our mainstream romantic Hindi films?
Why we repeatedly go on presenting the same old formula-based scripts in a new glossy-avatar missing the novelty factor?
Why we still don’t believe or follow that CINEMA actually is a highly effective audio-visual medium of telling NEW STORIES?
Give it a thought!
(The article also got featured in UC-News mobile app in July 2017)
