Dhadak: Dear People, STOP Saying 'Don't Compare Ishaan Khatter-Janhvi Kapoor's Film with Sairat'

A couple of months back, a movie starring Kay Kay Menon and Mandira Bedi came out called Vodka Diaries. It was lambasted by most of the critics including yours truly, for being a cheap rip-off of Martin Scorsese's layered Shutter Island. Sure, it was a bad film too, but the biggest criticism of the movie was, "How could they remake Shutter Island?" Interestingly, I have read some of my colleagues' tweets about last week's release, Dhadak, where they were saying not to compare the movie with its inspiration, Sairat, but to view it as a standlone movie. Some even went on to say that the movie is a homage or a tribute to the Marathi movie. Weird.

Look, I am not someone who would say that some movies should be left untouched. Every movie in the world can be remade, provided you do proper justice to the original. When Karan Johar had produced the Hindi remake of Mani Ratnam's Tamil hit, OK Kanmani. there was quite an outrage by Tamil movie lovers over it. While I knew that it won't match the predecessor in terms of quality, remaking a movie like OK Kanmani is not a bad idea since KJo's production house can deal with the ideas of young romance and live-in-relationships with ease. Wasn't Saathiya, the Hindi remake of Mani Ratnam's Alaipayuthey a good enough interpretation? It's another matter that the audience didn't give OK Jaanu a chance to prove itself, as the movie was a disaster at the box office.

But remaking Sairat is a different matter altogether. It can be remade, but by those who have managed to understand the sensibilities embedded in director Nagraj Manjule's narrative. As some of the reviews (that were scathing to Dhadak) pointed out, Sairat stood for everything against how Bollywood perceived romance in real life. That's why there is a stark difference in the tone of the light-hearted first half and the grim, gritty but poignant second half. That's why Manjule chose to launch two outsiders as leads, as opposed to Karan Johar who would rather launch two star-kids instead.

It's also why the hero in Sairat is portrayed by a fair-skinned guy belonging to the Dalit community, while the heroine is a duskier girl from the higher caste. In Dhadak, Janhvi Kapoor is fairer than her usual self, with her makeup still intact even when her character is shown after just delivering a baby.

There is also a scene in Sairat where Rinku Rajguru's character asks Akash Thosar's character, why, when his bow-legged has such a good name (Pradeep), they called him 'Langdya'. In Dhadak, don't expect such empathy. Here Langdya is replaced with a vertically challenged man, who doesn't even look a collegian and who is forced to dress up in a school uniform so that we can make jokes on his heights. This lack of maturity is something we have seen in Bollywood in past, and Majule has used Sairat subtly to point them out.

And I am not even discussing in details about how Dhadak screws up caste politics and the abject view of poverty. When Archi in Sairat starts living in a shanty from a mansion, it was like falling down from a cliff for her. We realise then as she glances with disgust at the filthy makeshift toilets, or having to fight with a kid to watch television, that she didn't expect such turn of living when she ran away with Parshya. In Dhadak, there is no shanty; there is just a decent-looking lodge room where the biggest challenge for Parthavi was her husband's under-developed jealousy and a lizard. This is Malabar Hill's outlook of poverty.

As someone who watched Sairat when it came out, I knew it the moment Karan Johar announced the remake that it would not have done even 10% justice to the original. Without understanding the nuances, it is unfair to call Dhadak a remake of Sairat. Rather, it would have made our lives much easier if Karan Johar had gone for a remake of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak or Ek Duuje Ke Liye.

Even KJo knows this and therefore, that's why he hasn't had a single cast or crew member from the original movie to watch the early screenings and validate the remake.

But the outrage of the remake was enough publicity (plus the curiosity for Janhvi, after the sad demise of her mother, the late Sridevi) for the movie to have a decent first weekend at the box office. If you felt the story of Dhadak is good and the ending made an impact, it is all Sairat!

Dhadak is a passably decent movie that didn't have the guts to change our perception of loving someone outside our strata or caste, or in showing differently abled people in a kinder light, or talk about the issues Dalits have been facing from the higher caste. Comparing this youth-aimed romance to Sairat is an insult to the latter, but comparisons are definitely inevitable.

As for paying homage to Sairat, well, didn't the audience already do so by making it the highest-grossing movie in Marathi cinema of all time? For those who think remaking Sairat hardly matters for lovers of cinema, do imagine someone trying to remake The Dark Knight!

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 23, 2018 04:30 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).