Devdas was the highest-budget Bollywood film of its time (2002) and is considered one of Shahrukh Khan’s best performances. It won ten awards at the 2002 Filmfare Awards.
These facts lead me to believe that if I really enjoy watching many Bollywood movies, there must be some element that I am missing, because I found it to be a visually beautiful yet self-indulgent piece that makes too much of a fuss over a weak and useless man.
Maybe it has something to do with the culture that values boys more than men. Maybe he tends to spoil those same kids. I know India is a difficult place. Most men are not spoiled cowards. But this movie still seems to spark sympathy for someone who spends too much time doing nothing but pitying himself and destroying himself with alcohol.
And perhaps because it is another Bollywood attempt to destroy the Indian custom of arranged marriages. In this case, instead of celebrating the triumph of love, we see the tragedy that results when it does not.
I agree with the original love story between Devdas and the little neighbor that Paro is touching. And I certainly agree with Paro’s mother that they should marry now that Devdas has returned from England as a law school graduate.
By rejecting marriage to Paro and humiliating her mother, Devdas’s mother certainly did something cruel and cruel.
Why did Devdas write the letter to Paro denying her love, permanently separating her from him? That is not clear to me, but apparently it was out of a desire to please his mother.
Paro’s mother manages to get revenge on the Devdas family by marrying Paro to a man even richer than they are, but it is an unhappy marriage. He is older, has three grown children.
Meanwhile, a good friend has got Devdas to start drinking. It is not explained how he finished his law studies in England without picking up a few pints with other students in a local pub.
Then this same friend takes Devdas to a local brothel, but it’s not a cheap dirty and seedy place. It is an elaborately beautiful pavilion next to an artificial sea. The lighting makes for a joyous carnival and there is plenty of room for dancing and singing.
One of the brothel women falls in love with Devdas. Why? It is love and therefore beyond explanation, apparently. They never seem to have sex. He is obsessed with Paro and drinks excessively to stop thinking about her. He doesn’t want any other woman. But the prostitute befriends him when he’s sick and he moves in with her. Presumably he’s supporting her, but that wasn’t clear to me, especially after his family cut him off.
Alcohol is killing him faster than normal. He was warned that any alcohol could kill him. But when his original friend gives him a glass of wine, he drinks it, knowing it will kill him.
Then there’s the melodramatic sequence where she goes to Paro’s house to see her true love one last time, but her husband won’t let her leave the mansion.
The depth of her love for Paro is clear, but to me it would be much more admirable if she carried her torch as she begins a career rather than living off a prostitute and drinking to death.
