Meenakshi Shedde: Sairat remains "un-touchable"

Illustration/Uday Mohite

With Dhadak (Heartbeat), the 'Dharmification' of Nagraj Manjule is complete. The Hindi remake of Manjule's Marathi stunner Sairat (Wild), produced by Karan Johar's Dharma Productions and directed by Shashank Khaitan, Dhadak primarily works because the source material is so strong. But for those who have seen Sairat, Dhadak is its sunscreened version: an Indian film using sunscreen, as it is worried about getting a tan. Sairat remains "un-touchable": I doubt anybody will ever be able to touch its searing brilliance in addressing caste issues. Not in India or overseas: I remember the deafening silence of the international audience at the climax, before a long ovation, when we had Sairat's world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in 2016.

Dhadak is a doomed inter-caste love story, between the upper caste Parthavi and the lower caste Madhukar, set amid Udaipur's romantic lake palaces. Sairat, a ferocious attack on caste in India, offered an infectious masala romance, before socking you in the solar plexus with its climax. In Sairat, we see the powerful context of caste in which Archi and Parshya's forbidden love blossoms amid sugarcane fields: when the couple elopes, her family threatens to chop Parshya to bits if he doesn't leave their village; the entire Dalit basti is set on fire, his father is humiliated before the panchayat; her brother slaps his college professor in class. In Dhadak, their romance is airbrushed onto Lake Udaipur's glamorous domes and havelis. Caste is barely mentioned: Madhukar's father warns him not to mess with an upper caste girl, and later her brother, not even a student, slaps a professor in class. There is no significant class difference between the couple either: she lives in a palace-turned-hotel on the lake; his family runs a restaurant on it. Bah! The nuances and extreme raw power of the original are erased: Bollywood prefers to inhabit a vanilla middle band, so you won't spill your popcorn. In Sairat, you feel Archi's loneliness as they move to a filthy slum after eloping; Dhadak's couple moves to an airy, high ceilinged Kolkata room, because we can't possibly put a darling Kapoor in a slum scene for her debut, right? It's not a shagun. Unforgivably, Khaitan dilutes a readymade powerful climax: in Sairat, the lovers are stabbed to death by her upper caste family, while their baby totters out, its baby footprints soaked in blood. Khaitan's climax retains some of the hard-hitting power of the original, but its dilution ensures that the film is only about this couple, whereas Sairat's climax was a haunting pointer to the future of caste in India. Khaitan's climax is determined as much as by caste, as securing the career of a khandaani Kapoor.

Ishaan Khatter is utterly charming, if not mature. Janhvi Kapoor, daughter of Sridevi and Boney Kapoor, has a bland beauty and her body language reeks of inborn entitlement. Shridhar Watsar and Kharaj Mukherjee are memorable. Vishnu Rao's cinematography is competent, while editor Monisha Baldawa could have made its 138 minutes more taut. Khaitan's earlier Humpty Sharma ki Dulhania and Badrinath ki Dulhania have had stalkers and violent men being forgiven and adored by their otherwise smart, independent female victims.

Karan Johar is very savvy in co-opting the strengths of regional cinema, including Baahubali (Telugu) and Sairat (Marathi); here with mixed results. I'm puzzled: If Dhadak is just another star-crossed romance - with hardly any caste - why bother with Sairat at all?

Meenakshi Shedde is South Asia Consultant to the Berlin Film Festival, award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshishedde@gmail.com

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