Come, fall in love...

This post is inspired by an email Baby sent me, about how DDLJ is close to 600 weeks of continuous play in a cinema in India, grossing nearly twelve billion rupees or one billion ringgit. It is the longest-running initial release in the history of Indian cinema.

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge means The One With the Heart Will Take the Bride. It was the first Bollywood movie I ever watched in a cinema and marked my long love affair with hottie Shah Rukh Khan. I watched it with a bunch of girlfriends one Saturday afternoon; we had been looking forward to it all week. I don’t know if I would have felt as nostalgic as I do had I watched it later in life, but at 16 and waiting for our own Prince Charming’s, I guess this movie promised all the music music, colour and dance true love would bring when it came a-calling. In between posting, I've been digging up clips over at Youtube and smiling to myself - its amazing how we can store away and conjure up emotions through an old movie or song.

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge is a story about human relationships. There are fisticuffs, comic interludes, and a stern father insisting on an arranged marriage. Filmed in Switzerland, it was one of the first Bollywood films to feature Indians living outside India. Tujhe Dekha is probably the most famous song from the movie but Mere Khwabon Mein (esp Kajol dancing in the rain bit) and Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna are my favourite songs from the movie.

The Wiki has a quote which I believe says it all:

"It's a flawed, contradictory movie — aggressive and tender, stiff and graceful, clichéd and fresh, sophisticated and naive, traditional and modern. It's also, I think, a classic."
Film critic Charles Taylor of Salon.com