Are Bollywood films finally normalising divorce?
With the recently released JugJugg Jeeyo, has the wedding-obsessed film industry broken its silence on marital separation?
A quick glance at JugJugg Jeeyo’s poster would indicate the classic makings of a Dharma Productions offspring—a glossed-over yet colourful capsule of “live, love, laugh,” that snakes through histrionic tropes around romance and familial relationships. That the film was about divorce and failed marriages comes as a shock, in the same way that Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna did 16 years ago. To see Bollywood beacons like Anil Kapoor and Neetu Kapoor, and in KANK, Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukerji, embody unhappy individuals trapped in broken marriages is arguably blasphemous for Indian audiences, especially when pitted against some of the biggest hits of our times, such as Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), Veer-Zaara (2004) or Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001).
JugJugg Jeeyo turns out to be the story of two crumbling partnerships in a conventional Punjabi family. It’s also noteworthy that the cast includes industry heavy-hitters like Anil and Neetu Kapoor, along with Kiara Advani and Varun Dhawan. A traditional Indian boomer marriage turns when Bheem (Anil) finds the excitement he seeks in his life in an extramarital affair. Simultaneously, a more modern arrangement between long-time high-school sweethearts (Advani and Dhawan) falls through as the former chases her high-flying career and the latter’s ego is wounded in the process.
In the past, films like Neerja (2016) and Thappad (2020) have acknowledged how separation is a valid choice in the face of extreme circumstances like domestic violence, but matters of the heart and mind—unhappiness, falling out of love, or evolving in different directions—haven’t been entertained by Bollywood in a significant way. Given this context, JugJugg Jeeyo is an encouraging narrative in a country where marriage is such a sacrosanct institution that filmmakers have largely stayed away from probing into its mysterious machinations.
Trouble in paradise
Despite mainstream Bollywood’s penchant for the grand wedding finale, even the early aughts do offer up a handful of films that were brave enough to venture into the territory of marital separation. Both Aziz Mirza’s Chalte Chalte (2003) and Shaad Ali’s Saathiya (2002) focus on what comes after the wondrous seven vows between lovers—the harsh realities of living together as a married couple. Even in these stories, the obstinate happily-ever-after ultimately takes home the prize. Rather than a fleshed-out exploration of the root of the conflict, these scripts place the problem in the naivete of young love, using a majority of the screen-time to contrast the before with the after. It’s almost as if the raw messiness of a marriage doesn’t make the cut for screen-worthy content.
In comparison, Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna stands out as a brave outlier, truly progressive for its time. Like JugJugg Jeeyo, it presents the career-versus-marriage debacle between Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta. However, according to The Wire’s film critic Tanul Thakur, its distinct message lies in the failure of Rishi (Abhishek Bachchan) and Maya’s (Rani Mukerji) marriage, wherein Mukerji falls for, and cheats with, a newfound acquaintance (Khan), despite being married to a perfectly ‘nice guy.’ “There need not be something “wrong” with a person for the marriage to crumble, as even Karan Johar once explained to a reporter,” Thakur suggests.
But even while KANK shines as a rarity addressing the emptiness that comes with marrying for the wrong reasons, it ultimately focusses more on the bitterness of the fallout and the ensuing romance between Maya and Dev (Khan), than on the reasons for the unsuccessful marriages.
Talking the talk
It’s for a similar reason, that JugJugg Jeeyo, despite its unlikely premise, eventually isn’t a courageous enough film to be deemed a trailblazer. “What happened? Did Anil Kapoor just get bored? Why now? There were a lot of logical, narrative and thematic gulfs that the story did not bother to plug because it just was not well thought out,” Thakur opines. Despite granting Neetu Kapoor’s Gita (married to Bheem for 35 years) the courage to finally ask for a divorce and reverse her decades-old mistake, in the end, it is implied that Bheem will win Gita back. Why? Simply because he has decided so. As Thakur rightly points out, “Our films go to great lengths to assuage the egos of the Indian patriarch.” Even Dhawan manages to win Advani back after apologising for his ego-bound attitude problems, breaking into a larger-than-life proposal gesture in the middle of their divorce proceedings. “The film is its own biggest villain. It shows unreconciled differences between a couple, and then throws a bone to the audience,” adds Thakur.
Actor, producer and film critic Aseem Chhabra points to Zoya Akhtar’s Dil Dhadakne Do (2015) as a film that changed this conversation in mainstream Hindi cinema. Though a minor subplot of the film, Aisha (Priyanka Chopra) manages to break free from the shackles of a patriarchal regime—which, in her case, meant her unfulfilling marriage to Manav (Rahul Bose). In a piercing moment during a spa date with her mother Neelam (Shefali Shah), she dares to question why Shah never divorced her husband (Anil Kapoor) despite being in the know about his adulterous ways. “Marriage is not a race, there’s no finish line one needs to reach,” Aisha argues. In turn, Neelam rebukes that giving up is the easy but wrong option in any marriage, and that Manav is a nice boy who will give her all the material joys of life—Aisha should just compromise and stick it out. Even so, Aisha uses her agency and decides to divorce Manav—albeit only after her father’s approval—on the account that she doesn’t harbour the feelings of love that a marriage should be built on. “Just because two people don't physically or mentally abuse each other doesn't necessarily mean that they can be happy and live together. I think that's a real step forward,” Chhabra remarks.
For a historically hidebound industry to frame divorce as a valid, productive life choice—rather than a tragic outcome—itself is a significant departure. Still, do not look here for the hard-hitting conjugal chaos of a Marriage Story (2019) or Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). As Thakur explains, what such Hollywood films have achieved is the triad of individual one, individual two, and the relationship itself. All three entities are on their own “well thought out, well written, well filmed and well performed,” and “the excellent alchemy of these three things elicits real emotional responses from the audience,” he reveals. “There’s a lot of effort being put into first fleshing out the characters on their own—fundamentally nice people who are also obviously flawed—so you see both sides of the story. There’s also a considered examination of the relationship itself—what made it work, what made it fall apart and the irreconcilable differences.”
Perhaps one day, we’ll look to Bollywood to make meaning of why two people decide to spend the rest of their lives together, how the messy day-to-day reality compares to this magnanimous promise, and the ways in which divorce can mean one individual's idea of a happy ending, but that day is definitely not today.
This story originally appeared on The Established
