Devdas was the highest budgeted Bollywood film of its time (2002) and is considered one of Shahrukh Khan’s best performances. It won ten awards at the 2002 Filmfare Awards.
These facts lead me to believe that as much as I enjoy watching a lot of Bollywood movies, there must be some element I’m missing, because I found it to be a visually beautiful but self-indulgent piece that made too much fuss over a weak and worthless man.
Maybe it has something to do with the culture that values boys more than men. Maybe he tends to spoil those same guys. I know that India is a difficult place. Most of the men there aren’t spoiled cowards. But this movie still seems to generate sympathy for someone who spends too much time doing nothing but feeling sorry for himself and destroying himself with alcohol.
And maybe because it’s another Bollywood attempt to destroy the Indian custom of arranged marriages. In this case, instead of celebrating the triumph of love, we see the tragedy that results when it doesn’t.
I agree that the original love story between Devdas and the little neighbor Paro is touching. And I certainly agree with Paro’s mother that they should get married now that Devdas has returned from England as a law school graduate.
By refusing marriage with Paro and humiliating his mother, Devdas’s mother undoubtedly did something evil and cruel.
Why did Devdas write the letter to Paro denying his love, which permanently separated her from him? That is not clear to me, but apparently it was out of a desire to please her mother.
Paro’s mother manages to take revenge on Devdas’s family by marrying Paro off to a man even richer than them, but it is an unhappy marriage. She is older, she has three older children.
Meanwhile, a good friend of his has gotten Devdas to start drinking. How he got through law school in England without having a few pints with other students in a local pub is left unexplained.
This same friend then takes Devdas to a local brothel, but it’s not a cheap, dirty, seedy place. It is an elaborately beautiful pavilion next to an artificial sea. The lighting makes it a joyous carnival and there is plenty of space to dance and sing.
One of the women in the brothel falls in love with Devdas. Because? It is love and therefore beyond explanation, apparently. They apparently never have sex. He is obsessed with Paro and drinks excessively to take his mind off her. He doesn’t want any other woman. But the prostitute befriends him when he is sick and he moves in with her. Presumably, he’s rooting for her, but that wasn’t clear to me, especially after her family split him up.
The alcohol is killing him faster than normal. He is warned that any alcohol could kill him. But when his original friend gives him a glass of wine, he drinks it knowing that he will kill him.
Then there is the melodramatic sequence where she goes to Paro’s house to see her true love one last time, but her husband won’t let her out of the mansion.
The depth of his love for Paro is clear, but to me it would be much more admirable if he carried his torch as he begins a career instead of living by prostitution and drinking himself to death.