Salman Khan is back on the big screen with ‘Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan’, which has been released in theaters today. The film, which is Salman’s first big screen release in a leading role in four years, features an ensemble cast including Telugu actor Venkatesh, Pooja Hegde, Jagapathi Babu, Bhumika Chawla, Vijender Singh, Raghav Juyal, Siddharth Nigam, Jassie Gill, Shehnaaz Gill, Palak Tiwari and Vinali Bhatnagar.
While waiting for ‘Bhai ka jalwa’ on the big screen, we watched an old Salman Khan film also featuring one of the actors from ‘Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan’ - Bhumika Chawla. The film that resurrected Salman’s career, the film that is considered one of the few where Salman impressed by his acting chops, and the film that became a rage almost 20 years back - ‘Tere Naam.’ There is one more similarity between ‘Tere Naam’ and ‘Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan’ - Salman’s atrocious hairstyle. While the verdict is not yet out for his long hair in ‘Kisi Ka Bhai...’, his hairstyle in the 2003 film became a trend (we still wonder why!!), and his fans sported the style for years.
We watched an old Salman Khan film also featuring one of the actors from ‘Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan’ - Bhumika Chawla. The film that resurrected Salman’s career, the film that is considered one of the few where Salman impressed by his acting chops, and the film that became a rage almost 20 years back - ‘Tere Naam.’ His hairstyle in the 2003 film became a trend (we still wonder why!!), and his fans sported the style for years.
If we look back, ‘Tere Naam’ is the start of the larger-than-life status, the massive fan following, and the phenomenon that Salman Khan has become now. His character ‘Radhe’ gave him immense popularity in the hinterland as this was the first time he played a character very close to real life. We could find Radhes in every tier 2, and tier 3 city punching their way to glory/ill-repute in the small town they live in.
Plot
‘Tere Naam’ is the story of Radhe Mohan (played by Salman Khan) - a rowdy boy of Agra who refuses to grow up and goes around beating people (at times for all the right reasons) or wasting time in a college that he has passed out long back. He has no ambitions in life, even after he falls in love with a girl, his idea of a good job to ‘settle down’ is to become a bouncer in a bar. Radhe falls in love with a simple, docile, and innocent girl ‘Nirjara’, who has been sent to college only because her future husband wants her to graduate. In one of the scenes, a family friend asks Nirjara, “aage pad likh key karogi kya jab shadi karke ghar hi sambhalna hai?”
Nirjara refuses Radhe’s proposal leaving him heartbroken, and he accepts her decision – though only for a few days. He eventually kidnaps her (after all, how can a man be man enough if he takes a girl’s rejection healthily ) and expresses his love again, and Nirjara, now aware of Radhe’s goodness (he saved her sister’s life and helped her going back to her husband’s house) says yes to him, but their union is short-lived as Radhe is beaten up by local goons leaving him brain damaged. His family admits him to a religious institution for mental patients. As he gets better, he runs away from the institution for his love, only to find that she has committed suicide on her wedding day. Radhe returns to the institution despite being completely fine. The epilogue shows Radhe, now old and still in the institution, tying peacock feathers in Nirjara's memory.
From glorifying toxic masculinity to alienation from the concept of consent – everything that is wrong with Tere Naam
The film kicks-off with a scene set up on a college campus where students are waiting for the election results of the university elections. You can hear campaigning noises in the background, and one of the points of the manifesto is, “ladkiyo ko aankh maarne pe ladko pe koi karyawahi nahi ki jayegi.’ Radhe Bhaiya’s candidate wins the election, and there is a celebratory song where he sings, ‘Ishq mein naa ka matlab to haan hota hai.’ The campaigning lines and the lyrics of the songs set the tone of the film, and one knows what to expect going forward.
The film glorifies toxic masculinity to the extent that at one point, Nirjara, who is kidnapped by Radhe, apologises to him for not accepting his love or misunderstanding him. The entire kidnapping sequence is so uncomfortable to watch as to how a man, who kidnaps a woman he claims to love, ties her to a chair, and threatens to kill her, is portrayed as a bechara-jilted lover. Every action and dialogue he mutters psychotically would have been enough for any sane girl to run as far away as she can from the man (no matter how good he is), but lo and behold – Nirjara not only accepts his love even apologises to him. The apology should have been directed at every teenage girl, who at an impressionable age, would have watched the film and considered this horror of a show just another way to express love by a possessive lover, who would have thought of Nirjara’s acceptance of his love as a norm and not a filmy exception. And to think of all the boys who would have considered Radhe their role model and his ways of wooing a girl a masterstroke. After all, the girl did accept the love after being kidnapped and threatened!
In one of the scenes, after rescuing Nirjara’s sister (who has been abandoned by her husband for money) from a brothel, our saviour Radhe beats her husband up and threatens him to bring his wife home and behave nicely with him. The wife happily returns to the husband – a man who kept her away from her kid for money.
All these sequences normalise, sometimes even glorify, everything that is wrong with our patriarchal society.
Second half - Where Tere Naam strikes the right chord
Despite all its flaws, why ‘Tere Naam’ worked for many people (including me) was its second half and its tragic end. I remember watching the film as a teenager and being shell-shocked at the end (not to forget how everyone wept buckets at the movie hall). Films that don’t have a happily ever after tend to stay with the audience longer – 'Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak', 'Ek Duuje Ke Liye', 'Devdas', 'Tere Naam' are a few examples. The film succeeded in connecting an emotional chord with the audience in the second half, with Salman in a mental institution and his family and the love of his life praying for his recovery.
How the mental institution is shown in the film or how a doctor advises Radhe's family to send him to a place that medical science doesn't recognise is also a bone of contention but for now, we exempt it as cinematic liberty.
It can be debated that the film promotes ruining your life for one person, and even Salman had mentioned in one of the interviews that he was not happy with the film’s ending as he was afraid that people would follow it in real life. Mr. Khan conveniently ignored other red flags in the movie that had more chances of being followed by his fans.
Special mention to Sarfaraz Khan (Kader Khan’s son), who plays Salman’s friend in the film. He aces all the emotional scenes and is a friend we all deserve.
Though Salman barely has any dialogue in the second half, the actor holds the fort with his acting, especially in the last scene where after seeing Nirjara dead, he goes back to the van of the mental institution despite his family and friends trying to persuade him otherwise.
Can you imagine any movie now where Salman doesn’t have dialogue, even for 10 mins of his screen time? After all, what is a Salman movie if bhai doesn’t talk about a ‘commitment’ or two or boasts about how he cannot be understood, aka ‘Dil Me Aata Hun Samajh Me Nahi.’
'Tere Naam’s is one of the few movies where we see Salman as a character onscreen, not as the actor himself.
It was recently revealed that Anurag Kashyap was supposed to direct the film but was later replaced by Satish Kaushik. We wonder what the film's sensibilities would have been had Anurag helmed it!
PS: It felt good to see good actors like Darshan Kumar and Gopal Datt in the film, who are much-known faces now.