In addition to the general criticism that Imtiaz Ali’s new Love Aaj Kal seems to reveal a sense of creative bankruptcy, it also puts forth a question that many in Indian cinema either refuse to ask or don’t bother to answer: Should a filmmaker not grow with their audience? The reactions to Imtiaz Ali’s latest film, Love Aaj Kal (2020), brings to mind what someone once said, “We cannot have, but can lose, everything.” A retelling of his film that came a little over a decade ago, Ali’s new version beats all logic behind a filmmaker taking a stab at their earlier works.
Ideally, remakes serve as updates that take advantage of better resources at the disposal of the filmmaker, like in the case of Michael Mann remaking his low-budget LA Takedown (1989) as Heat (1995) with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in the lead, or an upgrade in technology that allowed Cecil B DeMille to remake his 1923 silent The Ten Commandments again in 1956. Sometimes, a remake shows a filmmaker’s maturity over the years, which is the big difference between the 1934 and 1956 versions of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.
While not an uncommon phenomenon across cinemas of the world, remakes of films by the same storyteller are undertaken for a host of reasons that have little to do with what could probably have been at the back of Ali’s mind while making Love Aaj Kal the second time around. On the one hand, it’s understandable that filmmakers constantly endeavour to connect with a new audience, which is also getting younger when compared to the storyteller with each passing year, but what happens to those who once formed the filmmaker’s core viewer group?
Ali is not the first filmmaker in Hindi films to make an exhausting effort to attract the average viewer out there by telling an old story in a voice, which according to him, would resonate with the youth. Laden with box office hits, Ali’s filmography might look impressive, but scratch a little, and you’d notice how he’s been telling the same story again and again. Moreover, his shot-taking, blocking, and even framing seem repetitive and had it not been for the sheer star power, few of his recent films might have found it challenging to engage with the viewer.
It’s ironic how then Imtiaz Ali never thought of telling a story that could connect with the viewers of his breakthrough film, Jab We Met (2007), that would probably now be in their early 40s. The same can be said of filmmakers such as Mani Ratnam, Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Yash Chopra. In the mid-1980s, Ratnam’s protagonists were closer to his age, and while that generation is still out there, Ratnam’s leading actors continue to get younger. Similarly, Chopra believed that a filmmaker had to connect with the young to remain relevant, and as a result, turned to his son, Aditya, for inputs while making Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), Veer-Zaara (2004), and Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012).
The viewers that grew up on Ratnam and Bhansali’s earlier films would often wonder if the filmmakers ever think about how the lives of Divya and Chandrakumar from Mouna Ragam (1986) or Raj and Annie from Khamoshi: The Musical (1996) turn out?
(Gautam Chintamani Film historian and bestselling author and can be contacted at gautam@chintamani.org)