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    India’s Master of Nostalgia Takes His Sweeping Vision to Netflix

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    In the small Bombay theater that showed big films, his father brought him — over and over again — to see the biggest of them all.With every one of his 18 viewings of “Mughal-e-Azam,” a hit 1960 musical about a forbidden romance between a prince and a courtesan, the young boy fell more in love. The rays of light, beamed in black and white, opened to him a world at once majestic and lost. The dialogue, crisp and poetic, lingered in his thoughts. The music swept him to places that only later in life would he fully understand.Bombay would eventually change, to Mumbai. India, cinema and music — they would all change, too. But more than half a century later, Sanjay Leela Bhansali — now 61 and a rare remaining master of the grand old style of Indian filmmaking — has not let go of his seat at that small cinema, Alankar Talkies, on the hem of the city’s red-light district.His mind remains rooted there even as his work moves beyond the theater walls. His latest project, released on Wednesday, is an eight-episode musical drama on Netflix that gives a “Game of Thrones” treatment to an exalted milieu of courtesans in pre-independence India.Sanjay Leela Bhansali, a rare remaining master of the grand old style of Indian filmmaking, directing “Heeramandi” for Netflix.Actors waiting between scenes on the set of the eight-episode musical drama in Mumbai.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Monkey Man’ Review: Dev Patel Is Kid, a Human Punching Bag

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      Dev Patel stars as Kid, a human punching bag who comes up with a plan to avenge a past wrong. The hits keep coming and the hero keeps taking them in this rapid-fire film.The thriller “Monkey Man” opens on a tender scene and a nod to the power of storytelling, only to quickly get down to down-and-dirty, action-movie business with a flurry of hard blows and faster edits. For the next two frenetic hours, it repeatedly cuts back to the past — where a mother and child happily lived once upon a bucolic time — before returning to the grubby, raw-knuckle present. There, the hits keep coming and the hero keeps taking them, again and again, in a movie that tries so hard to keep you entertained, it ends up exhausting you.Set largely in a fictional city in India, “Monkey Man” stars Dev Patel as a character simply called Kid who, in classic film-adventure fashion, is out to avenge a past wrong. To do that, Kid, who works as a human punching bag in shadowy ring fights (Sharlto Copley plays the M.C.), must take repeat beatings so that he can, like all saviors, triumphantly rise. Before he does, he has to execute a complicated plan that pits him against power brokers working both sides of the law. As with most genre movies, you can guess how it all turns out for our hero. More

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      ‘To Kill a Tiger’ Review: The Survivor Who Refused to Be Shamed

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      In this unflinching documentary, a young girl in rural India and her father fight an entrenched village culture to seek justice for her brutal rape.Nisha Pahuja’s documentary “To Kill a Tiger” opens with a startling image: a 13-year-old girl braids her hair in close-up as her father relates, in gutting voice-over, how she was raped by three men. Pahuja had planned to mask the girl’s face in post-production, but when Kiran (her pseudonym in the film) saw the footage at age 18, she chose to reveal herself in the film. It’s a defiant gesture on her part, to refuse the shroud of shame.“To Kill a Tiger” is a film bristling with such invigorating defiance. It follows Kiran and her parents, who live in a village in northeastern India, as they seek justice with the help of activists from Srijan Foundation, an advocacy organization. Interviews with other villagers reveal the tribalist, deeply patriarchal values that ensnare Kiran. Both men and women chastise her for her supposed irresponsibility and suggest brazenly that she marry one of her rapists to restore her “honor” and the village’s harmony.Kiran and her family are heroes, but this isn’t a simple tale of heroism. The film lays bare the uneasy and inadequate avenues available to survivors seeking justice. Is the long ordeal that pushes the family into debt and forces Kiran to repeatedly rehash her trauma making a difference? Is a fight that pits the family against their entire community worth it? Does the imprisonment of the perpetrators offer any real succor to the victim or upend the patriarchy?“To Kill a Tiger” doesn’t offer any easy answers. But in staying close to Kiran’s father, who refuses to let his daughter bow her head, and to the girl, who speaks with hope and flinty confidence, one thing is clear: The revolution begins at home.To Kill a TigerNot rated. In Hindi, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Television

      ‘Indian Matchmaking,’ It’s Time to Break Up

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      The Netflix dating show claims that tradition can find love where modernity has failed. But all it does is reinforce age-old prejudices.“In India we don’t say ‘arranged marriage.’ There is ‘marriage’ and then ‘love marriage.’” Of all the platitudes — and she spouts a lot of them — issued forth by Sima Taparia, the self-anointed top matchmaker of Mumbai and breakout star of Netflix’s “Indian Matchmaking,” none land more true than this one. It’s not as if finding husbands and wives for unpaired offspring hasn’t been a fixation of anxious parents across centuries and civilizations, even if in Europe and the United States, love may have finally entered the chat and stayed long enough to become unexceptional. But for older generations in India, parents’ finding spouses for their children has been the norm for so long that the idea of those same adult children’s marrying for “love” is still alien enough for it to occupy an entirely separate category — now a reality-TV show.“Indian Matchmaking,” whose third season premiered on April 21, follows the immaculately coifed, highlighted and bejeweled Taparia as she steamrolls through the lives of unhappily single men and women of Indian origin mostly living in America. She promises to find them the spouses of their dreams, as long as they don’t dream for too much. The cast varies (with some fan favorites and villains occasionally brought back) but most are seemingly well-off young people, urbane and cosmopolitan, who run their own businesses and attend boutique workout classes. This season’s standouts include an emergency-room doctor named Vikash, whose god complex extends to referring to himself in the third person as Vivacious Vikash and performing solo dances to Hindi songs at his friends’ weddings (and allowing video of himself doing so to be broadcast on the show); he wants a tall Hindi-speaking girl because he’s really attached to Indian “culture.” There’s Bobby, the over-energetic teacher who performs a math-themed rap that ends with him snarling “mathematics, boiii” at the screen. Arti from Miami lists weekly visits to Costco as her hobby.The activities that these aspirant matchees choose for the dates they go on (wine tastings, yoga with baby goats) are straight out of gentrified Williamsburg. Interspersed in between these scenes are cameos from their stony-faced parents, astrologers dispensing sex advice, face readers, tarot-card readers and Taparia’s own peremptory admonishments reminding them that they’re never getting everything they want in a partner, so they better start lowering their expectations now.She promises to find them the spouses of their dreams, as long as they don’t dream for too much.That she has not yet made a single match resulting in marriage over the course of two seasons and 16 episodes has deterred neither Taparia herself nor the makers of the show from continuing this Sisyphean journey into a third. She is not one to suffer from impostor syndrome or even, apparently, introspection, so her matchmaking methodology remains resolutely unchanged. The only big departure this time around is the expansion of her hunting grounds to Britain, where she commences her reign of terror in London by telling a 35-year-old divorcee named Priya that she “should not be so much picky.”To people like me, who grew up in this third-party matchmaking milieu, Sima Taparia or Sima Aunty (a nickname she gives herself) is just that — an aunty, an archetype we’ve known and avoided all our lives: the obnoxious and overbearing relative, neighbor or acquaintance with zero sense of boundaries. But to the global audiences who eagerly lapped up “Indian Matchmaking” during the early months of the pandemic, Taparia was a delightful novelty, in one moment tossing bon mots of conjugal wisdom with the serenity of an all-knowing sibyl (“You will only get 60 to 70 percent of what you want; you will never get 100 percent”) and in the next moment ordering a female client to get rid of her “high standards” with the brusqueness of a guidance counselor breaking it to an overzealous student that they’re not getting into Harvard.In India, the business of parents seeking brides and grooms for their children is a cruel and cutthroat one, having originated as a way to preserve caste endogamy.Throughout history, the coming together of two people in matrimony (holy or otherwise) has never been just about the union itself — it is the broader institution that reveals the deepest anxieties (financial, religious or racial) undergirding a society. “Indian Matchmaking” bills itself as just any other show about the caprices of trying to find love in a hostile world. It is predicated on the idea that seeking the help of someone as quaintly old-fashioned as a matchmaker is superior to the travails of dating online, where one must undergo far worse indignities like being ghosted or breadcrumbed. Here, at least, relationship expectations are mutual, and after all, what is a “biodata” (a curiously-named document Taparia uses in her practice) if not the same exaggerated dating-app profile but in résumé form and with fewer wince-inducing mentions about loving tacos and pizza.But in India, the business of parents seeking brides and grooms for their children is a cruel and cutthroat one, having originated as a way to preserve caste endogamy, and it continues to be fraught with violence from every side, a reality that is at odds with the show’s portrayal of the process as a decorous, civilized exchange that takes place over tea and manners. The most pernicious aspects are hidden behind a flimsy veneer of fabricated gentility, apparent in the many euphemistic phrases in which Taparia, the singles she is matching and their parents communicate. The show’s title itself reads like an awkward, faux-anthropological translation, when in reality, the Indian here in “Indian Matchmaking” is merely a stand-in for outrageously wealthy, landed upper-caste Hindus (with an exception here and there).Caste, one of the most malicious forces still dictating India’s social fabric, is gingerly intimated by low-voiced mumblings of “same community.” Openly declaring that you want to marry someone filthy rich would be uncouth, so the words “good family, good upbringing” are uttered frequently. Women cannot afford to be “picky.” Women have to be “flexible.” They must also learn how to “compromise.” My personal favorite of these, though, is “adjust,” one of the hardest-working euphemisms in Indian English, whose meaning linguistically can range from the squeezed addition of a third backside on a bus seat meant to fit only two, to a man’s parents’ demanding that the girl foredoomed to marry their son give up her professional career to pursue full-time daughter-in-law activities. Curiously enough, the men are spared the brunt of such exhortations.“In marriage, every desire becomes a decision,” remarked Susan Sontag in 1956, a strikingly trenchant line that I recalled when watching the show’s participants being quizzed about their “criteria” for a potential spouse. Initially, they start out reciting millennial-speak straight out of the 2012 twee-internet era: the desire for someone “kind” with a “sense of humor.” But upon further prodding, out come tumbling the real demands, the decisions that display that their modernity hasn’t yet overcome the inherited prejudices that govern this entire phenomenon. Costco-obsessed Arti cannot help mentioning that her father would have really, really, really loved for her to marry someone from her “community.” Vivacious Vikash, meanwhile, for all his insistence on Indian “culture,” forgot to specify that he wanted a Hindi-speaking girl from America (a “same community” of its own) and not the “very Indian” woman with the Indian accent that Sima Aunty found for him.Source photographs: NetflixIva Dixit is a staff editor at the magazine. Her previous articles include an appreciation of eating raw red onions and an exploration into the continued popularity of “Emily in Paris.” More

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      in Music

      Following a Folk Tale Through the Himalayas

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      In a high hamlet, a two-hour trek up a verdant slope beneath ice-clad Himalayan peaks, an argument erupted over a folk tale. Two brothers, Pralad Singh Dariyal, 60, and Hira Singh Dariyal, 77, heatedly debated which nearby village in the Johar Valley was once the home of the story’s heroine. Eventually agreeing on a few possible locations, Hira said that the story, which is sung as a ballad and which he remembered from childhood, was virtually unknown today among the area’s young people. “They’re the YouTube generation,” he explained with a shrug.“No one even knows how to sing it anymore,” Pralad added.The voice of Pralad’s wife, Sundari Devi, rang out from the kitchen into the courtyard, where I sat with the brothers and a couple of other people in front of clothing drying on a line and pieces of a butchered sheep drying on a neighbor’s stone-shingled roof. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she shouted. “Some people do remember how to sing it. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s not important.”In the Kumaon region of the Indian state of Uttarakhand, where sky-scraping summits soar over a maze of sublime hills in a corner of the country that abuts Nepal and Tibet, the story known as “Rajula Malushahi” has been passed down orally for hundreds of years. A sprawling epic of adventure and true love that unfurls across a broad swath of the landscape, it’s long been recognized as Kumaon’s pre-eminent folk tale. Short versions were sung by parents to their children, while renditions lasting up to 10 hours were performed by hurkiyas, or traditional bards, who chanted and drummed alongside a handful of backup vocalists for local audiences, often as a way to pass cold winter nights, before televisions — and now smartphones — became ubiquitous.When I first learned about “Rajula Malushahi” on a previous visit to Kumaon, I was immediately intrigued. After reading as much of the literature about it as I could find, I decided on a recent trip to use it as a guide to traveling through the area, letting it take me places I might not otherwise think to go.While creating an itinerary, I realized that there was no definitive route to follow, since there is no definitive narrative. Before it was first written down in the 1930s, numerous versions were sung. Though they tend to share the same overarching plotline, there are many variations among them, including where certain episodes are said to have occurred. It seemed fitting that planning a trip around a centuries-old folk tale was more an act of creative interpretation than a strict adherence to a single text.A traditional Kumaoni house, built of stone.Morning mists rise from fields in the Gomati Basin.I headed first for the Johar Valley, which is where the story (according to most versions) begins. There, a girl named Rajula, who was so beautiful that the sun paled before her, was born into the Shauka tribe — one of the subgroups of shepherds generally known as Bhotias. Her father, Sunapati Shauk, was the richest trader in the region, shuttling goods over the Himalayas between India and Tibet on the backs of sheep and goats, the best animals for navigating the treacherous terrain. Historically, this once-lucrative route thrived for about a thousand years before collapsing in 1962 with the outbreak of a war between India and China and the closure of the border.In the story, Rajula grows into a clever and confident young woman. She meets Malushahi, the young monarch of the Katyuri Kingdom, which ruled Kumaon from around the seventh to the 11th centuries, and they fall in love. They are quickly separated, however, as her hand has already been promised by Sunapati to the son of a Tibetan king, an important trading partner. Rajula, rebelling, escapes from this undesirable arrangement, then travels through Kumaon to find Malushahi again, overcoming numerous obstacles with her courage and quick wits. After many dramatic twists, including deceptions, murder and sorcery, the lovers are finally reunited — either happily or in death, depending on the version.After initially arriving in Delhi at the end of last September, I traveled for a few days — first by rail, and then by road — to the Johar Valley’s main town, Munsiyari. My friend, the writer Shikha Tripathi, who is herself Kumaoni, happened to be there working on a story about climate change. Together, by S.U.V. and on foot, we traveled for most of a morning to the village of Paton, where we talked in the courtyard with the Dariyal brothers, as Shikha translated.Our conversation concluded when a village-wide feast began. A woman who had married a man with family in Paton was making her first visit — 13 years after their wedding. Everyone came out to welcome her, including people who now lived elsewhere and had returned for the celebration. Vats of rice, mutton and dal had been prepared, and we ate on flat rooftops with views of the valley walls slanting sharply into the clouds.When the feast wrapped up, Shikha and I went back to Pralad’s place to get our bags and shift to the house where we’d been offered accommodations for the night. I stepped into the kitchen to bid Sundari goodbye and found three other women sitting on the floor with her. Before I could say “thank you,” two of them began to sing, filling the low-ceilinged space with the resonant tones of the first verses of “Rajula Malushahi.”Nanda Devi Dariyal, in red, and Duri Devi Sailal, in blue, sing Rajula Malushahi in the kitchen of Sundari Devi Dariyal, who sits behind them.They sang for about five minutes, which was more than long enough to transform the dimly lit room into a musical time machine, transporting us beyond the temporal world into the wonder of the moment. It was Sundari’s gift to us — and was her way of conclusively proving the point she had made to her husband.The next day, Shikha and I hiked, drove and hiked (uphill again) to a village where Hira had told us that some of Rajula’s community had scattered after being cursed at the end of her story. Upon reaching Jimia, we learned that a celebration of the Hindu festival Dussehra was about to begin.Led by drummers and men carrying saplings adorned with flags and tufts of yak hair, a joyous procession descended from the homes at the core of the village to a small temple at its edge. Two sheep were sacrificed to the local goddess, Bharari Devi, a form of Durga, a major Hindu deity. The drumming surged with fevered intensity and the jagar — a ceremony in which the goddess enters into the body, or bodies, of one or more of those in attendance — began around a smoldering bonfire.A possessed woman staggered around like a zombie. A man named Gajendra Singh Quiriyal — the village’s grand pradhan, or leader — fell to the ground and convulsed on the fire’s edge, caking himself with ashes and embers. The goddess then settled into Rudra Singh Quiriyal, Gajendra’s brother. Blankly staring at something no one else could see, he flung rice over himself and into the crowd. Villagers shouted questions one atop the other, like a scrum of reporters at a chaotic news conference, seeking help with their problems. Most persistent was a middle-aged man desperate for his wife to have their first child. Bharari Devi promised to grant his wish.Led by Tulsi Devi Nuriram, at center, women sing and dance during Dussehra celebrations in Jimia.Ukha Devi Quiriyal, wearing traditional Shauka clothing, dances during Dussehra celebrations in Jimia.When the jagar was over, the pradhan, who’d brushed himself off, asked me to snap a picture of him with his wife and daughters and insisted that Shikha and I stay with them that night. Rice and meat from the sacrificed sheep was served to all. On a grassy terrace just above the temple, women danced in a circle while singing songs to welcome back to the village their sisters and daughters who had moved away after marrying men from other places. Some of the dancers wore traditional Shauka dress — including embroidered headscarves, black blouses, and black skirts.When we spoke to the women as they sat together following an hour or so of dancing, the elders among them said that they had all heard the tale of “Rajula Malushahi,” but only one remembered how to sing it. Encouraged by the others, Tulsi Devi Nuriram performed a few verses, surprising me with a completely different melody and rhythm than I’d heard the previous day.Everyone I would meet who knew the story line of “Rajula Malushahi” — the youngest of whom appeared to be in their 60s — spoke of it as though it was based on actual events, while well aware that it is a folk tale. It occupies a liminal space in the collective imagination, somewhere between fiction and fact, fantasy and reality — which was not unlike how I internalized my experience of that day.The following night, which Shikha and I spent at a homestay in the village of Darkot, a center of Shauka weaving, we met with a folk theater performer who was well-versed in much of the scholarship about the tale. After launching into a long, impassioned analysis of which elements of particular versions were most likely to be true, Lakshman Singh Pangtey concluded by saying, “There is no guarantee about anything I’ve said. After all, it’s a 500-year-old story.”Women at Bageshwar’s Bagnath Temple gather to observe Karwa Chauth, praying for long lives for their husbands.The Hindu ritual of arti is performed near the confluence of the Saryu and Gomati Rivers, in Bageshwar. A funeral pyre burns in the background.Shikha stayed in Munsiyari, and I continued on alone. I first went to Bageshwar, where Rajula once stopped to pray. The god Bagnath, a form of Shiva, was so overcome by her beauty that he attempted to extort her affections with threats and promises — a deal she angrily refused. When I visited the same site at the confluence of the Sarayu and Gomati rivers, where a 15th-century Chand-era temple stands, women had gathered to observe Karwa Chauth, praying for long life for their husbands. In the bustling, friendly town, scenes of life and death, commerce and worship, played out on the streets and riverbanks on a scale large enough to fascinate yet small enough to be absorbed without overwhelming.In the hills and villages of the Gomati Valley, women harvested winter fodder for their livestock, men turned fields with plows pulled by oxen, and everyone I met was happy to see a stranger and chitchat in Hindi. I was charmed by the town of Dwarahat, where Katyuri-era carved-stone temple complexes are tucked among brightly colored houses and gardens, near where Rajula was captured, beaten and left for dead in the forest. And I visited the riverside temple of Agniyari Devi in Chaukhutia, where Malushahi first laid eyes on Rajula, and she laughed at him for mistaking her for the goddess herself.Along the way, I happened to meet a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who knew one of the last great hurkiyas of Kumaon. Before long, Nain Nath Rawal invited me to his home, in Sirola village, to hear him sing. I went with my friend, Shriyani Datta, who was staying near Almora, some two hours away.In the town of Dwarahat, Katyuri-era carved-stone temple complexes are tucked among brightly colored houses and gardens.Plowing a field along a tributary of the Gomati River.Rawal’s two-story stone house was set along a ridge atop cascading terraced fields with eye-popping views of the high peaks. He invited us into a room on the upper floor, with shelves of awards for his contributions to Kumaoni culture, and pictures of gods and goddesses encircled by flower garlands hanging on bright yellow walls. An 81-year-old farmer, he was taught to sing by his mother, who gave him lessons when he was young.When, among many questions translated by Shriyani, I asked why audiences root for Rajula when they wouldn’t approve of a young woman from their own community overtly disobeying her father, breaking a marriage contract and running away to find her beloved, he acknowledged that “today, her family would probably send the police after her.” But, he explained, Rajula and Malushahi were destined to be together, which meant that Rajula was doing the right thing. “If that happened now,” he added, “you couldn’t prove that fate was involved.” The story’s theme, he said, is “turning divine intention into reality through love.”Rawal sang while playing an hourglass-shaped drum, called a hurka, for over 20 minutes, accompanied by Baji Nath Rawal, who tapped on a stainless steel plate, while two vocalists, Mohan Nath Rawal and Chandan Nath Rawal, sang backup. Though he had made more than 120 recordings during his career, this was the first time he had recorded “Rajula Malushahi.”Nain Nath Rawal, left, sings the entirety of “Rajula Malushahi” while playing the hurka. Accompanying him, left to right, are Baji Nath Rawal, Mohan Nath Rawal and Chandan Nath Rawal.Rawal remarked that he used to perform the ballad around Kumaon at all-night festivals, but that they were rare events these days. “My generation is trying to keep our local culture alive, as much as we can,” he said, “but times have changed.”For now, at least for those who recall it, the story is still woven into the landscape, which conjures memories of a young woman who, ages ago, defied convention to follow her heart.“I hope this song survives,” Rawal said, as we headed downstairs.Michael Benanav is a writer and photographer whose most recent book, Himalaya Bound: One Family’s Quest to Save Their Animals and an Ancient Way of Life, was published in 2018.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023. More

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      in Movies

      ‘RRR’ Picks Up Oscar Nomination for Best Song

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      Pop quiz: What are the three R’s?They aren’t reduce, reuse, recycle — this awards season, one of the hottest topics of conversation has quickly become the Telugu-language Indian action spectacular “RRR,” or “Rise, Roar, Revolt,” which picked up an Oscar nomination for best song on Tuesday.The movie, which stars two of India’s most popular actors — Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr. — is set in Delhi during the early 1920s and follows two patriotic but philosophically opposed men who team up to rescue a kidnapped girl (Twinkle Sharma) from British colonial officials (Alison Doody and Ray Stevenson).The film was already a worldwide box office success when it was released in March — it was directed by one of India’s most successful filmmakers, S.S. Rajamouli, with a whopping $72 million budget — and grossed $65 million during its opening weekend.But now, it has become the rare Indian hit to catch on with American viewers outside the Indian diaspora, thanks to word-of-mouth social media buzz and an unusual theatrical rerelease strategy.After the film, originally distributed by Sarigama Cinemas, initially played at 1,200 screens across the country in March — and began streaming on Netflix in late May — Dylan Marchetti, the president of the distributor Variance Films, saw its potential crossover appeal when he watched it repeatedly with enthusiastic audiences.So Variance got in touch with Sarigama, and they took the rare step of relaunching the film — sold to moviegoers as an “encoRRRe” — which led to its breakthrough in the United States.Speaking to The Times in August, Cristina Cacioppo, who programmed “RRR” at the Nitehawk Prospect Park in Brooklyn, said it drew moviegoers in the 20-to-30 age range, most from outside the Indian diaspora.“There was an overall wave of joy throughout,” Cacioppo told The Times. “You could feel the room smiling, the jaws dropping.” (More than three hours of Charan and Rao wrestling tigers; pulling off a daring bridge rescue involving a motorcycle, a horse and a flaming train car; and schooling British partygoers as they dance in perfect synchronization in matching suspenders will do that.)Josh Hurtado, a consultant at the independently run Potentate Films who collaborated with Sarigama and Marchetti on a one-night-only theatrical revival of “RRR” in June, told The Times that many attendees praised the film for the same reasons that had previously discouraged them from watching new Indian movies: “long run times, song and dance numbers, and ridiculous action” he said. “People come out saying they wish that this three-hour movie were longer.”The film also gained a robust afterlife on TikTok, with its earwormy syncopated dance number “Naatu Naatu” (Telugu for “Native Native”), becoming a viral hit thanks to Charan and Rama Rao’s playful syncopated dance moves and infectious singing. (The lyrics are by Chandrabose, while M.M. Keeravani composed the music.)After winning a Golden Globe for best original song earlier this month, as well as a Critics Choice Award for best foreign language film and a New York Film Critics Circle award for best director for Rajamouli, the film has its sights squarely trained on the big one: a best song Oscar for Charan and NTR Jr.’s joyous extravaganza of shoulder rolls, arm pumps and hook steps. More

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      in Movies

      India’s Love Story With ‘D.D.L.J.’ Is Still Strong After 27 Years

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      Well past the film’s intermission, the crowd keeps trickling in. Some pay at the ticketing window with a couple of taps on their phone; others dump fistfuls of coins. They are students and office clerks, prostitutes from the waning red-light district nearby, day laborers still chasing dreams in India’s “maximum city,” and the homeless with dreams long deferred.India’s film industry puts about 1,500 stories on the screen annually. But the audience that files every morning into the Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai is here for a movie that premiered 27 years ago — and has resonated so intensely that this once-grand 1,100-seat theater has played it every day since, save for a pandemic hiatus.The film, “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” — which translates as “The Big-Hearted Will Take the Bride” and is known as “D.D.L.J.” — is a boy-meets-girl story set against the backdrop of a moment of immense change and unbridled possibility in India.The Indian economy had just opened up, bringing new opportunities, new technologies and new exposure to a rising middle class. But it also brought new strains, as the choices afforded by economic opportunity — to decide your own love and your own life — ran up against the protective traditions of old.In many ways, the India of today looks like the India reflected in the movie. The economy is still on the rise, and it is now about 10 times the size it was in the mid-1990s. A technological revolution, this one digital, has opened new worlds. Women are seeking more freedom in a male-dominated society. And the forces of modernity and conservatism remain in tension as an ascendant political right wing appoints itself the enforcer of conventional values.The sense of unlimited possibility, however, has receded. As the early rewards of liberalization peaked and economic inequities deepened, aspirations of mobility have diminished. For those left behind, the world of “D.D.L.J.” — its story and stars, its music and dialogue — is an escape. For those still striving, it is an inspiration. And for those who have made it, it is a time capsule, the starting point of India’s transformation.Moviegoers at the Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai.A scene from “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,” which translates as “The Big-Hearted Will Take the Bride.”“It grew and grew and grew and went on to, you know, become an heirloom,” said the actress Kajol, 48, who played the female lead, Simran, in the film. “I have had so many people who told me that, you know, we have made our children sit down and watch ‘D.D.L.J.,’ we have made our grandchildren sit down and watch — and I was like, there are grandchildren now?”She burst out laughing. “Children I am fine with. But grandchildren?”When the pandemic closed theaters for a year, many speculated that “D.D.L.J.’s” record run would end. But the film is back on for its 11:30 a.m. slot at Maratha Mandir, often drawing crowds larger than those at afternoon screenings of the latest releases.Some of those who show up have watched it here so many times that they have lost count — 50, 100, hundreds.A taxi driver who was in the line outside the theater one morning this fall had seen it six times, a welder about a dozen. A gray-bearded merchant of secondhand goods claimed about 50 viewings, the same for a 33-year-old delivery worker.Then there were the regular regulars, those who trek here nearly every day. Madhu Sudan Varma, a 68-year-old homeless man who has a part-time job feeding neighborhood cats, comes about 20 mornings a month.The woman with her head wrapped in a plastic bag?“I come every day,” she said. “I like it every day.”No one knows her real name — it may be Jaspim, but even she is unsure. It doesn’t matter, because everyone calls her by the name she prefers: Simran, just like the star on the screen.People buying tickets for the film at the Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai.Fans of the movie, which is known by its initials D.D.L.J., taking selfies in front of a poster for the film in Mumbai.Lying at night in the room she keeps as a prostitute in Kamathipura, Mumbai’s red-light district, she sometimes dreams of the film’s scenes, she says. In the morning, she makes sure she doesn’t miss the show — not even on this day when the henna she used to dye her graying hair hadn’t yet dried. She would rather come wearing a plastic bag than not make it.More on IndiaOn the Big Screen: A Mumbai theater has shown the movie “D.D.L.J.” nearly every day since 1995. In many ways, the India of today looks like the India on the screen.India’s Cram City: In Kota, students from across the country pay steep fees to be tutored for elite-college admissions exams — which most of them will fail.Renting as a Single Woman: As they delay or reject marriage and live on their own, single working women in India face an often infuriating quest for housing.Delivery Apps: Fueled by billions of dollars in investments, Indian companies are rushing to cut delivery prices and wait times, relying on an army of low-paid, harried drivers.“I don’t see any other films, just this one,” she said. “I feel great when I come here. I get lost in the songs and dance.”‘Live Your Life’“D.D.L.J.” is a love story. But it is also about compromise.Kajol’s character, Simran Singh, is brought up in London, though her father uses the income from the family’s corner store to raise his children in the traditions of India.On a European trip with friends, Simran meets Raj Malhotra, played by Shah Rukh Khan, a wealthy young man raised by a single father. The rest of the film’s three hours are spent on the couple’s efforts to persuade Simran’s conservative father to let go of the arranged marriage he had planned for his daughter and bless their union.“Go, Simran, go,” the father declares at the end, after the film barrels through tears, bloody fistfights and many songs of longing. “Live your life.”Kajol said that the movie’s middle path had broken new ground. Before “D.D.L.J.,” she said, “we only had films that talked about either this way or that — either we had films that celebrated marriages and everybody was involved from uncles to aunties, or it was ‘us against the world, we will fight it out, we will live together, die together.’ I think ‘D.D.L.J.’ came up with a very simple thought — to say that maybe we can walk a line.”When the movie was released in 1995, Kajol and Mr. Khan were both relative newcomers. Kajol went on to become one of the most successful actresses in Hindi cinema. Mr. Khan, 57, found even greater fame, becoming one of India’s most recognizable faces.Both actors benefited from an Indian entertainment industry that was itself in transition, as money flooded in with the country’s economic liberalization. Now, the country has over 200 million households with televisions, up from 50 million then. Many more people can afford cinema tickets. And India, which recently became the world’s fifth-largest economy, is expected to have one billion smartphone users by 2026.Film stars have become permanent fixtures on billboards and on television commercials. India is a huge market — it is projected to soon pass China as the world’s most populous country — and a star’s simple post of sponsored content on platforms like Instagram can be lucrative. Actors who would once perform in different films in the same change of clothes now find themselves with unfathomable wealth.Every day, fans throng outside Mr. Khan’s seaside home in Mumbai, the heart of India’s film industry, hoping for a sighting. Buses passing the road in front of his house slow down so passengers can take selfies.The film’s lead male actor, Shah Rukh Khan, greeting fans outside his home in Mumbai on his 57th birthday.A crowd gathered outside Mr. Khan’s house in Mumbai to get a glimpse of the popular actor on his birthday. He has challenged perceptions of masculinity in Indian filmmaking.On his birthday, thousands gather, waiting and chanting for Mr. Khan — and he does not disappoint. He climbs up a caged platform, throwing kisses at the fans, before breaking into what has become his signature move: a leaned-back spread of the arms.Bollywood has long favored those with legacy and family ties. Mr. Khan resonates as an outsider, a child of middle-class struggle in Delhi who lost both of his parents when he was young.The towering residence he now occupies with his family “is a middle-class monument to a man who didn’t own property,” said the Indian economist Shrayana Bhattacharya. “He became this prism and this concept. He represents this idea of mobility.”Ms. Bhattacharya wrote a book, “Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh,” about how Mr. Khan symbolizes the possibilities that only India’s liberalized economy could produce, and what he has meant to young working women as he has challenged perceptions of masculinity in Indian cinema.Taking advantage of new channels of information, he has built an image of an empathetic partner who listens, helps with household chores and shares the spotlight with female co-stars.The power of this image, he said in one interview, has become such that he has become “an employee of the myth of Shah Rukh Khan.” It is so potent that young women, Ms. Bhattacharya said, “want to be him” rather than want to “marry him,” the emotion usually associated with older matinee idols.To some women, Mr. Khan — or at least his persona — is a reminder of the ways Indian men have not changed. Surbhi Bhatia, a data and development researcher in Mumbai, said she often binge-watched his talks as an antidote to the restrictive male energy around her. If she is feeling low or uncertain, she strolls down to linger outside his seaside residence.“You know when he spreads those arms,” she said about Mr. Khan’s signature move, “there is space to just go in.”In many ways, women have yet to achieve the economic promise of the new India. Only about a quarter of women participate in the work force, less than half the rate of all other major economies.For women who have found economic opportunity, society has been slow to accept their independence. Having their own incomes — or even just a smartphone — has translated into some new freedom. But when a husband comes into the picture, Ms. Bhatia said, it brings another layer of permission and the forfeiture of leisure hours to household chores.“The phone has done so much to give access, but not solved the larger problem,” she said. “It’s making us more lonely.”Surbhi Bhatia, a fan of Mr. Khan, outside his house in Mumbai. “When he spreads those arms,” she said of his signature move, “there is space to just go in.”Atul Loke for The New York TimesKajol, the film’s lead actress, at her office in Mumbai.India is still trying to decide where to set the line that “D.D.L.J.” suggested it walk between conservatism and modernity. Added to the tension is a Hindu-first fervor under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with Muslims in particular becoming a target. Mr. Khan, despite his crosscutting appeal, has not been spared.This month, right-wing groups vandalized cinemas promoting Mr. Khan’s latest film after a trailer showed its female star, Deepika Padukone, wearing a saffron bikini. The groups called the choice of saffron an offense to Hinduism, which is closely associated with the color.Mr. Khan is a product of a secular India — a Muslim who attended a Christian school and married a Hindu. Faced with attacks like these, he has largely stopped commenting on the country’s political direction.“I am a Muslim, my wife is a Hindu and my kids are Hindustan,” Mr. Khan said on a television show in 2020, using another word for India. “When they went to school, they had to write their religion. My daughter came to me once and asked, ‘What is our religion?’ I simply wrote in her form that we are Indian.”‘Love Doesn’t End’At the Maratha Mandir cinema, the logic of keeping one film running for nearly three decades is simple economics: New films could be hit or miss, but the crowd for “D.D.L.J.” is steady.“This picture is evergreen,” said Manoj Desai, the cinema’s 72-year-old executive director, “because it tells the story of true love. Because love doesn’t end.”The theater’s position near two transportation hubs ensures constant traffic. And it helps that the tickets are cheap: 30 rupees for downstairs seats and 40 for those in the balcony, or about 40 to 50 cents, a quarter of the price for admission to new releases.Ticket prices for the movie are part of the draw, as is the air conditioning inside the theater.Manoj Desai, the executive director of the Maratha Mandir cinema. “This picture is evergreen,” he said of the movie, “because it tells the story of true love.” “Three hours in air-conditioning, 40 rupees. Who will refuse that?” Mr. Desai said.The interview with Mr. Desai was interrupted by frequent phone calls, including one from his wife. “Home minister,” he said as he picked up her call.He and his wife, who are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, went through a caste-based love struggle of their own, though with a different ending from the one in “D.D.L.J.”When her wealthy Jain parents refused Mr. Desai, a Gujarati Brahmin, they eloped and made their marriage official in a faraway temple. Her family kept looking for them for two years, trying to register her as a minor to charge Mr. Desai with kidnapping.“Love has changed in the sense that breakups are easy,” Mr. Desai lamented.As he spoke, reporters called to inquire about a recent storm Mr. Desai had kicked up. In a scathing video interview, he had called a rising star “arrogant” for talking about taking his films directly to streaming services. The star was sent by his father on a private jet to Mr. Desai’s office to touch his feet and apologize.With Hindi cinema struggling to regain momentum after its pandemic lull, many producers and stars have opted to take their films directly to streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon.To purists like Mr. Desai, the growing trend is blasphemy. “There is the money, but sirrrrr,” he said, stretching and rolling his “r.” “What about theater? What about the big screen?”For the entire time that “D.D.L.J.” has been showing on Mr. Desai’s big screen, Jagjivan Maru has been the projectionist. He will soon retire after 50 years.Jagjivan Maru, the projectionist at the Maratha Mandir cinema, has been working there for more than 50 years, but plans to soon retire.The film draws a seemingly unending stream of viewers with themes that resonate across generations.When he sets up the day’s show, staff downstairs change into their uniforms, prepare the popcorn and samosas in the dimly lit corner concession stand and mop the marble floor between the rows of worn-out seats.“For 10 years, the hall would be full — there would queues for tickets,” he said about the film’s release in 1995. “After 10 years, it cooled off a bit — but the passion hasn’t died.”As customers line up to enter the theater, the guards frisking them and checking their bags repeat one reminder: “Don’t put your feet on the seats.” They know it’s futile, because many come precisely for that — to escape the city’s heat, to put up their feet.Mr. Varma, the 68-year-old homeless man, arrives at the ticket counter with his two bags of belongings, containing a blanket, some changes of clothes and his water bottle.He sleeps in a parked auto rickshaw near a Buddha statue. Waking before dawn, he feeds about 50 neighborhood cats, for which an NGO pays him 100 rupees — roughly $1.30 — a day. He worked in the family’s furniture upholstery business before a dispute forced him to the streets. He has lost everyone dear in his life, from his siblings to his parents.But one person resurfaced about 15 years ago: an unrequited love that had left him a bachelor. Caste differences made their union impossible, just as they prevent many love stories even today. The woman got married in 1984 and went on to have children who are now married.The rekindling is one of friendship. They speak by phone once a month; he asks about her life, her children, and she asks if he is eating well.“There were others who would call in the past,” Mr. Varma said. “There is no one else now.”Mr. Varma takes his seat on the ground floor of the cinema hall. In the row in front of him is Simran, the prostitute.Madhu Sudan Varma sleeping in an auto rickshaw parked on a street in Mumbai. He comes to about 20 screenings a month.Simran, so named after the movie’s lead female character, dancing to one of the movie’s many songs.When the movie’s wildly popular songs come on, Simran shimmies in her seat, singing along and getting up to dance in the aisle. She mimics the dialogue. And when the Simran on the screen waves goodbye to Raj, the Simran in the theater also waves her hand in goodbye.Every time the light from the screen reflects on Mr. Varma’s face, he is lounged in his seat, his soft eyes glued to the film.“I find peace here,” Mr. Varma said. “I get a little calm.” More

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      Israeli Filmmaker’s Critique of ‘The Kashmir Files’ Draws Fierce Backlash

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      The filmmaker, Nadav Lapid, criticized “The Kashmir Files,” a Hindi-language film that depicts a violent chapter in the restive region of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.NEW DELHI — A prominent Israeli filmmaker who sharply criticized a popular but contentious Indian film at a government-sponsored film festival faced a police complaint on Tuesday as Israeli diplomats scrambled to apologize.The filmmaker, Nadav Lapid, used his closing remarks at the festival, which was in the Indian state of Goa, to criticize “The Kashmir Files,” a Hindi-language feature film depicting a violent chapter in the restive region of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir during which members of the Kashmiri Pandit community were persecuted, attacked and killed.The violence and subsequent exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, a Hindu minority in the Muslim-majority region, occurred during a militant insurgency against Indian rule in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The film, a blockbuster hit that includes graphic scenes of violence, has been heavily promoted by India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, as a moving reflection of a sordid chapter in Kashmir’s history.State governments controlled by the B.J.P. gave their full endorsement of the film. Government workers were given time off to see the movie, and got tax breaks on tickets. The party paid for movie tickets for party workers, and later organized screenings.Some film critics and opposition politicians, however, found the film dangerously and unnecessarily provocative. The film supports a B.J.P. narrative of Hindu persecution to emphasize subjugation, a theme that is often repeated in political speeches and in efforts by top government officials to rewrite India’s history, playing up violence committed by Muslims against Hindus.The filmmaker, Mr. Lapid, issued his critique on Monday in remarks at the International Film Festival in India, where he was the festival’s jury head.“That felt to us like a propaganda, vulgar movie, inappropriate for an artistic competitive section of such a prestigious film festival,” Mr. Lapid said.“I feel totally comfortable to share openly these feelings here with you onstage,” he added, “since the spirit that we felt in the festival can surely accept also a critical discussion, which is essential for art and for life.”Nadav Lapid during the 74th Cannes Film Festival in France in 2021.Eric Gaillard/ReutersThe backlash to his remarks — from Indian politicians, Bollywood actors, Israeli diplomats and members of the public — was swift and severe.A Hindu lawyer in Goa filed a police complaint against Mr. Lapid early Tuesday, citing a criminal law that prohibits speech that deliberately offends religious sentiments.Israel’s ambassador to India, Naor Gilon, condemned Mr. Lapid’s comments on Twitter as “presumptuous and insensitive.”“You should be ashamed,” he added of Mr. Lapid, complaining that the filmmaker’s speech had made the work of Israeli diplomats in the country more difficult.There was no immediate response to messages sent to Mr. Lapid for comment. But earlier during the festival, he told an entertainment trade publication in Goa that he was participating in the festival not as an ambassador for Israel, but as an artist who travels the world seeking out different cultures.“If I wanted to represent Israel, I would have gotten into diplomacy,” he said in the interview.Israel’s consul general, Kobbi Shoshani, told a local TV news network that he didn’t agree with Mr. Lapid’s assessment of the film, and that his speech was a “big mistake.”The veteran Bollywood actor Anupam Kher, who starred in “The Kashmir Files,” also called Mr. Lapid’s comments “shameful,” drawing a comparison between the Jewish Holocaust and the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits.“It’s shameful for him to make a statement like this,” Mr. Kher said on Twitter. “Jews have suffered Holocaust and he comes from that community.”Mr. Lapid’s comments underlined India’s growing polarization under B.J.P. rule. While members of the main opposition Congress party said “hate was eventually called out,” members of the B.J.P. asserted that the “truth” about Kashmiri Pandits “will triumph.”On social media, some Indian writers and members of the political opposition defended Mr. Lapid’s right to critique the film on its merits.In India, the response to “The Kashmir Files,” which was released in March, has been deeply divided along political and sectarian lines. Nonetheless, it is a commercial success. Despite having no song-and-dance numbers — a staple feature of Bollywood movies — the film was an instant hit, grossing more than $43 million in worldwide sales. It cost about $2 million to make.The festival featured more than 280 films from 80 countries. Anurag Thakur, India’s information and broadcasting minister, singled out the Netflix series “Fauda,” from Israel, for praise. The series is a hit in India, and its fourth season premiered at the festival.Mr. Thakur also spoke, in Hebrew and English, of the two countries’ growing ties.“We have conflict in the neighborhood,” he said. “At the same time, we have thousands of years of history.”“India will be the content hub of the world in the near future,” Mr. Thakur added. “This is the right time to collaborate and reach out and make films around those stories which are not told to the world. India is the place and Israel is the right partner.”Mr. Lapid’s comments also no doubt embarrassed the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which organized the festival, and has paid special heed to India’s increasingly close relationship with Israel. The government found itself in the awkward position Tuesday of trying to distance itself from a head juror whom its festival committee had selected and given a platform.“His attempt to politicize the I.F.F.I. platform, which celebrates diversity in filmmaking by way of stories, narratives and interpretations by filmmakers, is unacceptable and condemnable,” Kanchan Gupta, a government spokesman, said of Mr. Lapid, and referring to the International Film Festival of India, the event’s official name.“Mr. Lapid is welcome to his personal views but the I.F.F.I. platform is not meant for airing those views,” he added. More