The film, jointly produced by Gouri Khan and Alia Bhatt and co-written and directed by Jasmeet K Reen, has been promoted as a Black Comedy.
But somehow the comedy, instead of making people laugh, is hurting their sensibility. How dare a wife do so? At best (or worst!), she could have lodged a complaint under Section 498A (Domestic Violence Act), some say. She did do so but later withdrew it when her hubby promised to mend ways and start a family. Which, again, turned out a ruse only to get out. Ultimately when the torture gets unbearable, she decides that enough is enough and puts her plan in action to break the shackles forever. “Why should men have all the fun”, as the tagline goes.
Not used to such ‘comedies’ the viewers are petrified, and they are not just males.
Not just males
A Twitter user (a woman I am avoiding here to name) whose bio shows “interest in men’s human rights”, exhorted: “This movie is a murder manual to kill husbands.”
But why not? As the last scene shows, it is an existential dilemma. If she had not killed him, he would have for sure.
Why is it that Shahrukh Khan, who did a trilogy of villain roles at the beginning of his career – Baazigar, Darr (K.k.k.k.k…Kiran) and Anjam – is today called the ‘King of Romance’ in Bollywood?
Here, in ‘Darlings’, the wife (Badrudnissa) has a genuine cause for killing the husband (Hamza). In ‘Baazigar’, Shahrukh throws Shilpa Shetty (her debut film) down from a rooftop for no fault of hers. In ‘Anjam’, the obsessive lover that Shahrukh is, takes off the oxygen tube from the mouth of Deepak Tijori, the husband of Madhuri Dixit, in the ICU, because she says she could not reciprocate his one-sided love as she was a much-married woman. He takes off the oxygen mask and asks her: ‘And now?’
I remember I was sitting behind Shilpa Shetty and Shahrukh at the premier of ‘Baazigar’ and there was not an iota of shock or anger among the audiences during the interval as they went around having their pop corns and coke laughing it out and thoroughly relishing every bit of the show.
Film critics and public at large welcomed the “bold Shahrukh Khan” for experimenting with new roles at the very beginning of his career. No one called him a villain, but his role was termed as one with a ‘grey’ shade even though it was totally Jet Black!
So where are we now more than 25 years after ‘Baazigar’ and ‘Anjam’?
It’s been only three days since ‘Darlings’ released on Netflix (August 5 to be precise). The response of the audiences in the next two weeks will show whether we have evolved as human beings in two decades or gone down.
Arth, the remarkable film
I remember some of the remarkable films of those days, particularly Mahesh Bhatt’s ‘Arth’ that gave a new dignity and image to a constantly battered wife termed ‘Doormat’ across the globe.
In the last scene of ‘Arth’, the middle-aged hero (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) asks his wife (Shabana Azmi) if they could start life afresh after he leaves his eccentric mistress (Smita Patil)?
She rather asks him: “Would you take me back if I had done the same thing?”
After a long pause, he says, ‘No’. She then walks away. No, not to her young admirer but to carve out a new path for herself.
‘Arth’ became a super-hit and still remains a classic to be seen again and again and again.
Cut to the ‘Darlings’. The response of the audiences in the next few days will tell us whether the daughter (Alia Bhatt) succeeds in winning over the hearts of her fans spread across all age groups the same way, or they just prefer her glam roles?
Meanwhile, we await the verdict with bated breath.
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