By Vishnu Mahesh Sharma
A holiday is around and so is a star’s release. For a long time now, this combination of start-holiday has been becoming more and more banal and formulaic star service vehicle. The fear of witnessing one more such is not baseless when you see Satyaprem (Kartik Aryan) slipping into his famous monologue avatar. Fortunately, this fear gets a balm in a very fantastic scene.
Very early in the story, Katha (Kiara Advani) attempts a suicide. No prize for guessing that she employs the most trusted and favorite reel mode of suicide to take her own life i.e. slitting her wrist. Nonetheless, because of this slitting one of her wrists is scarred. The continuity of this scar is maintained in the second half as well. In a post intermission sequence, this scar can be observe when Sattu kisses her hands. However, just before this kiss Kiara says “Kuchsachesehotehein jo dusaron se bardashtnahihoteaurkuchaise jo khud se bardashtnahihote”. Thus, the scar is there not literally but also figuratively. The scar may be on a body part but it is her soul that really is injured. When Sattusays “Jab khud se sachbolnekihimmat aa jaye to samajhlenakimeinbhisach sun kotaiyyarhun”, it conveys once soul is healed, body will also be healed.
The scene is very surprising for a film that progresses on a typical Namaste-London template for the majority of its first half(the distinction between first half and second half is so glaring here that it is actually a tale of two halves. I am sorry if this first half – second half is mentioned to the point of boredom in this essay for I cannot talk about the film without falling to this vocabulary). It may very well be that one of the accidental nice touches. Otherwise,how come this be there, by design, in a story that up until this point deliberately ticks all the check boxes of a rom com. However, it is this very sequence that proves to be the transitory point for here on wards the film is turned on its head and so are turned us conditioned to process certain stories a certain way.
Post this beautiful sequence, the film is rousingly masalafied and dramatized. The, seemingly, formulaic first half scenes start echoing in the second half in the best possible manner. Consider, for example, the scene in which Sattu gets to know about the tragedy Katha has gone through. The scene, so seamlessly, transforms from a romantic love making to psychologically traumatic. Immediately after this sequence, we see the couple standing at the either side of a closed door, which has glasses fitted in its frames. This glass wall is there both veritably and literally, of course.
Before this point of story, Sattu has been facing the affects of the tragedy, unknowingly. He does not know the gravity of the tragedy. Once, the cause and its heinous nature is revealed, he knows what is the right thing to do but at that very moment he has not gathered courage to do that rightful. The glass wall is a social barrier; that is bound to come once the tragedy is known to the society. However, in that moment Sattu is as vulnerable and dejected as Katha and cannot, instantly, like a hero, decide to take up the fight against social prejudice associated with the tragedy.
The screenplay turns upside down not only the genre but also character sensibilities and their attributes as well. In Sattu’s family, females do the heavy lifting and keep the kitchen running. The father-son duo performs the household chores. They come across as submissive. It gives us the sense that father-son do not have that conventional male ego. Nonetheless, when Katha breaks the news of her date-rape by her ex-boyfriendTapan, we witness that Narayan’s (Gajraj Rao in role of Sattu’s father) ego and perception of dignity associated with a sexual act is as intact as in any other male chauvinist. Thus in the climactic portion when Sattu wants to file a police complaint against Tapan, Narayan opposes the idea. He argues that this kind of rape (he literally categorizes rape into understandable and non-understandable rapes), cannot be proved or explained; the court case will tarnish family reputation; it will bring defame and stigma. This pseudo machoism and false sense of dignity is shown the mirror of reality by his son through a very effective (though filmy, but in a good sense) speech.
These portions of the film, very subtly, comment about ‘how men and women react, differently, to this kind of crime’ as well. All this while,we feel Sattu is more close to his father. At one point, he describes that his father is his one and only best friend. However, once the reason of Katha’s escapist behavior is revealed, this is not Narayan who approaches Sattu in these moments of isolation and loneliness. This is his mother Diwali (Supriya Pathak) who comforts him and gives a piece of advice that only a sympathetic female heart and mind can give.
This inverting and echoing goes beyond these gender sensibilities. There is a very cute sequence in the first half; Sattu says to Katha that “Agalibaar jab kisikijaanlenekiichcha ho to khudkinahibalkiuskilenajiskivajah se ye ichcha ho rahihai. Aurisskaam memein supporting actor ka role karunga, agar jaruratpadi to”. The climax is all about Sattu convincing Katha that she should file a complaint against Tapan and put him behind the bars. The ultimate courage has to be mustered up by Katha only but Sattu is ready to guide her and support her in whatever awaits them in near future.This urge for justice may come across as a quintessential masala heroism, but it is a moment well crafted, nonetheless. To get it completely, we again need to recall a minor sequence from the first half which backs this heroism solidly.
After treating Katha post her suicide attempt, a doctor, in hope of robbing off some money, tells her father that as this is an attempt of suicide they need to file a police case. However, our hero is there for a rescue act. Sattu shuts the doctor up by highlighting that the law related to this has been amended and at present, no police complaint needs to be filed. This, humorous and minor sequence, gives us glimpses of the inherent hero in Sattu. Like with any other banal scene of the first half, the cosmetics of this scene are also laid bare in the second half. Nothing, of first half, can be taken at its face value. Most of the silliness of the first half is given a purpose and motive which makes sense only after being complemented by the second half. The writing is so solid post the intermission that even a prop as routine as end credit song serves a larger objective.
When we are first introduced to Katha, her full name is announced as “Katha Harkarshan Kapadia”. Cut to the end credit song, on the same stage, on the same occasion, a year later, she is introduced as “Satyaprem Ki Katha”. Which is so natural considering the entire arc has been about how Sattu makes Katha his own. Whatever she had been through, he was there like a pillar. He has, in every possible manner, won her, her body, her mind, her heart, her soul, her companionship and hers and ours respect. The journey can only be culminated in one manner i.e. when he, rightfully, can say ‘Satyaprem Ki Katha’.
Minutes after watching the film, a Meta reference struck me. Some ten- eleven years ago, Kartik’s character helped NusratBarucha’s character in Akasvaani (title has lead pair’s name) dealing with marital rape. Here, in Satya Prem Ki Katha (title has lead pair’s name), his character helps Kiara’s character dealing with a date-rape and its trauma. This made me think two things; one that it has actually been life coming to full circle for Katik Aryan and second does casting of Kartik only has to do with his stardom and nothing to do with his casting in a similar role years before.
While only director Sameer Vidwans can answer this, what I can answer is the film is so much a tale of two halves that a woman, sitting next to me in the theatre, was cursing the film in the first half. However, she was the first to clap for Katha in a scene where she breaks the news of her date-rape, without a shed of fear, to Sattu’s family. This is nothing less than remarkable that the inverting and echoing leaped off the screen to force such a polarizing response that a reel sense of closure gave, equally empowering, real sense of closure. The film delivers a social message but without losing its accessibility and entertainment quotient and that for a star driven public holiday release is a pleasant deviation to witness.