re:mote voices

Title: Main Hoon Na
Cast: Shahrukh Khan, Nassar Abdulla, Kabir Bedi, Zayed Khan, Kunal Kumar, Rajiv Panjabi, Amrita Rao, Rakhi Sawant
Director: Farah Khan

Main Hoon Na is my first experience with Bollywood cinema, which I decided to go and see based on a couple of references, and reading up on the film based on having seen those references. Also it’s a medium I am kind of curious about, and lets face it Bollywood pretty much is a genre of it’s own –regardless of the other genres it may include in the process.

The film starts with a television interview with an Indian general who wishes to make some moves towards peace with neighbouring Pakistan. Unfortunately some don’t share his ambitions, and would rather see hostilities continue. As such plants in the audience pull out guns, and masked men storm the studio. Despite the general’s security measures, his second in command is killed in the clash, and the terrorists escape after threatening the general’s daughter. The officer who did the most to chase off the terrorists does so in classic action film drama, employing some particularly clumsy wire work in the process. The second in charge turns out to be this major’s father, and the general assigns the major to go undercover to protect his daughter. However the major is reluctant, with his dying breath his father has revealed that he has a brother. The general manages to persuade the major to accept his mission with the revelation that the general’s daughter and the major’s brother are in fact both at the same college. Thus setting up the scenario where the major goes undercover as a mature student. Of course the plot is complicated further by the fact that the general’s daughter is secretly in love with the major’s brother, who is a repeat student and something of a player, in the meantime the major quickly falls for the new chemistry teacher, and the terrorists are planning their move in the background.

Perhaps unsurprisingly with such a convoluted plot the film takes three hours to cover it all, incorporating much singing and dancing and particular set pieces along the way. Many of the action scenes are over the top, owing much to the influence of John Woo – an influence which is blatant, from the use of the Mission Impossible theme tune, the major being dressed totally like Tom Cruise for the climax scenes, which include the signature Woo white dove. At least for the particularly contrived climax, which takes in a part of the college being reconditioned and filled with scaffold, the major is more convincing than Cruise at the climax of Mission Impossible II.

The bulk of the film takes place is the college, giving it a very teen comedy feel. From the extremes of the farcically caricatured staff members to the antics of the students. This delivers a certain level of humour, which includes the by now seemingly inevitable matrix parody. It is against this background where much of the song and dance comes in to play – the first piece, which introduces the general’s daughter (perhaps an Indian Christina Aguilera) and the major’s brother being particularly striking and memorable. Though there is a combination of humour and spectacle which comes across with the major’s infatuation with the chemistry teacher, forcing him to burst into song every time she appears, accompanied by violists who are conjured up regardless of location.

Main Hoon Na I guess is like much of what I expect of the little I know of Bollywood, entirely over the top and filled with excess, producing what is undeniably spectacle cinema – which will at times it might be ham compared to the American cinema whose influence is at work here, it is entirely more memorable than much of that work.