Which does not speak much for his own will power: he finds it too easy to remain in dullened inebriation he finds it easy enough to proclaim himself dead. Just as Paro loves Devdas with all her being, in a sense, she also saps him of all emotion for anyone else.Īnd that is what leads Devdas to his final ruin and death. What makes her character so interesting is that she is a giver in contrast with all of Paro's taking. She heals Devdas, or tries her best to do so, given that he wallows in alcohol-induced stupor.
Initially intrigued by Devdas' immunity to her charms, she soon falls irrevocably in love with him. Introduced when Chunni Babu (Jackie Shroff) drags the lost, heartbroken and disheartened Devdas to her brothel, she turns out a gentle woman, all heart. Perhaps as a foil to Paro is courtesan Chandramukhi (Madhuri Dixit). Why then, you wonder, does Paro meekly run off in tears when Devdas' father insults her as being a woman with loose morals when she sneaks off to see Devdas in the middle of the night? She is also not one to meekly cower in the face of taunts - witness, in her marital home, she treads heated ground with her stepdaughter's mother-in-law. Pretty progressive, for a woman in a film set in the 1900s. (She once declares, 'Devdas is my love, Devdas is my pride.') She is unfearing enough to sneak into Devdas' home, at 2 am, asking him to elope with her. But here, Bhansali invests in her character a passing whiff of individualism. The ease with the tears might have probably made sense if Paro were just another Hindi film heroine. Snubbed by Devdas' mother Kaushalya (Smita Jayakar), Sumitra vows to marry her daughter off to a man far superior in status to Devdas' family. This is why they must shed tears: Paro's mother Sumitra (Kiron Kher) forcibly marries her off to Zamindar Bhuvan (Vijayendra Ghatge) in a fit of indignant pique. Christian and Satine cannot shed tears with the same ease that Devdas (Shah Rukh Khan) and his childhood sweetheart Paro (Aishwarya Rai) display in Devdas. Both have lead actors (Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman) that sing and dance. Both flaunt dramatic elements, costumes and sets.
But it must be said: Bhansali sails through his Devdas with just the same panache that Baz Luhrmann did in his Moulin Rouge.īoth films are musicals.
Hindi cinema's most expensive film ever is a responsibility most directors might bow under. Just the same quandary you might find yourself in, when faced with another: did Sanjay Leela Bhansali have to mount his tragic tale of two star-crossed lovers on this scale? I would like to shrug that off with just the same nonchalance that Devdas displays when Paro asks him how many hours there are in 10 years, six months and three days. If you find something amiss in this equation, I would like to know: Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Devdas is an assault on the senses
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