‘Dhadak 2’ Movie Review: Breaking Through The Clutter and Cynicism

The inherent burden of watching a Hindi remake is that the original film automatically acquires a position of control and, in most cases, invincibility. The source material becomes a point of comparison and judgement: a biblical blueprint that, if not followed, reduces the subjectivity of art to the semantics of love or religion. The adaptation can either “stray” or “be faithful”; its identity can only be determined by its devotion — or a lack of it — to the original. It’s a lose-lose situation of sorts. For instance, Dhadak (2018) not only strayed from Marathi classic Sairat (2016), it was entirely divorced from reality; it invisibilised the central theme and missed the memo. Even in isolation, it was a generic and gutless poor-boy-rich-girl tale.

Shazia Iqbal’s Dhadak 2, the spiritual sequel (in that it is also a remake of an acclaimed Indian film about caste hegemony), is miles ahead of its predecessor. It avoids all those mistakes: caste is not conflated with class, there’s no shying away from a sensitive subject, the cast is effective, and the storytelling commits to a pitch without losing the plot. Its main challenge, though, lies in how it interprets Mari Selvaraj’s untouchable Tamil-language debut, Pariyerum Perumal (2018). Selvaraj’s film was about a young man from an oppressed caste struggling to rise above the Savarna tidings of a law college. He is hazed, bullied and suppressed for being a “quota admission”; his budding friendship with a classmate puts him on a collision course with her upper-caste family. The essence of the film is that it remains his story. Their bond becomes a device to express his erasure of voice; she is smitten by him, but he’s so disenfranchised that he is yet to reach a stage of knowing whether he is in love or not. He has to confront the threat of multiple endings to even reach the beginning of ‘normal’ stories.

Iqbal’s translation of Pariyerum Perumal is Bollywoodised in some ways. The brown-facing of the male lead is the most visible symptom; it’s not new, but the context (of creating a marginalised “looking” character) amplifies the tone-deafness. There is also little sense of place or roots; the boy comes from a generic North Indian village to a nameless North Indian city. An area called ‘Bhim Nagar’ is the only indicator of identity — though one can read this as an allusion to how discrimination knows no labels. His hunger looks a bit cosmetic; the blue-coded sense of desperation and injustice feels more curated. The rangy black dog of the Tamil original — the canine catalyst of the persecuted hero’s journey — is a cute white dog (in a flashback) here. The trailer of Dhadak 2 itself copped flak for re-imagining his arc as a star-crossed romance — a genre that, by definition, sacrifices the anti-cinema of prejudice in pursuit of mainstream plurality.  

But contrary to perception, most of the thematic modifications aren’t lazy. If anything, they straddle the line between loyalty and individualism. If one gets past the ‘blasphemy’ of amending a Mari Selvaraj movie, Dhadak 2 makes fascinating choices within the confines of an underdog drama. It’s true that Neelesh (Siddhant Chaturvedi) reciprocates Vidhi’s (Triptii Dimri) feelings. They fall in love, but the conceit is that they stop short of becoming a love story. It’s almost as if the film brutally tethers them to reality the moment they threaten to embrace the escapisms of fiction. For instance, the soulful title track — one of the songs that invited accusations of reductive Bollywood entertainment — begins at one point, but it is abruptly cut short by the sudden presence of the honour-killing assassin (an in-form Saurabh Sachdeva). The camera is happily following the couple on a scooter until the music ceases, the shot grinds to a halt and starts following the background character on one of his ‘missions’; it brings to mind the scene from Darr that reveals the stalker hiding behind a tree in a trenchcoat — arresting the motion of the camera — while the oblivious honeymooning couple exit the frame. Even the other teaser track, Duniya Alag, plays only during the end credits. These pre-released romantic ballads act as a smokescreen. Like the romance itself, they are withheld from us. 

One might question the inbred agency of Neelesh; he’s confident enough to reach the meet-cute stage with Vidhi and return a kiss. But it makes sense if we take into account that his mother (Anubha Fatehpuria) used to be a political leader in their village. She comes with a readymade sense of wisdom and words, which is why Neelesh becomes someone who dares to love the second he discovers that Vidhi grew up without a mother. The decision to have a Muslim college principal (the ever-effortless Zakir Hussain) is not unfounded in this age, for he’s the only elder who understands Neelesh’s pain; there is no hierarchy within the business of oppression (across faith, class, caste and gender). As a result, when there’s yet another self-referential Dharma Productions nod through a Shah Rukh Khan poster — Neelesh tries to replicate his attire for a wedding — it isn’t an empty one. Neelesh idolises a superstar whose surname is indistinguishable from his name, without quite knowing it.  

A telling addition in the film is that of a Dalit student activist (Priyank Tiwari), an amalgamation of real-world figures like Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Rohith Vemula. He symbolises the dissent that strivers like Neelesh (and, by extension, the Mumbai film industry) try to avoid. One of the year’s most powerful on-screen moments revolves around his breaking of a fourth wall when we least expect it — an image that punctures our reverie and immediately revises the scale of Neelesh’s fight for visibility. It’s a jumpscare in which humanity is the ghost. It’s in this scene that we recognise how the war can’t afford to belong to just him anymore; his story is bigger than one relationship, college and career. He can’t be a lover or a lawyer because, in the eyes of society, he’s yet to earn the right to survive.  

Chaturvedi finally refurnishes the promise he showed in Gully Boy (2019), but he really locks in when Neelesh’s trauma is forced to don the robes of rebellion. His reaction shots depict the conflict of someone who is running out of silence — the performance isn’t as primal as Kathir’s, but Chaturvedi’s outsider-ness often emerges to keep the film honest. When Neelesh tells Vidhi’s father that “I wanted to fly, but you took away my sky,” the lyricism of the line unlocks the legal vacuum within casteism. You can tell that he speaks in first person, with pronouns, because maybe it’s his only opportunity to be both first and a person.  Even the string-heavy background score unfolds as if Neelesh is the one reclaiming the regal sounds of privilege and melodrama.

Perhaps the most significant alteration is the character of the young woman. The Tamil film presented her as a product of patriarchy: a girl so sheltered and oblivious to the ways of the world that she mistakes privilege for open-mindedness and caste blindness for social consciousness. A shrunken personality that would otherwise be attributed to the male gaze became an authentic reflection of the region. Dhadak 2 opts to ‘update’ her without compromising on the complexity of her role. It stages Vidhi as someone with more agency and attention, of course, but it’s not as simple as making her a crowd-pleasing rebel. Vidhi initially behaves like the kind of progressive student who has derived her awareness from social media and pop culture trends; she uses the term “toxic masculinity” to describe an ex-boyfriend early on. She’s the sort of character who’s primed to hijack Neelesh’s experience and co-opt his oppression by virtue of being a gender minority.  

She delights in shocking her family members, respects a doting dad (Harish Khanna’s kind face does wonders), stands up to a sexist cousin, and generally defies the status quo. She takes charge with Neelesh — in conversations, on scooters and in love — as though she’s rescuing him by sharing the same emotions. Her upper-caste saviour complex is concealed within layers of liberal spirit and enterprise. But the clincher is that Vidhi has information; she isn’t informed. She reaches a glass ceiling in the second half, when her intent stops aligning with her truth. Her modernity fails to bypass the trappings of tradition. When Neelesh keeps insisting that she doesn’t get how different they are, she keeps insisting that it doesn’t matter to her instead of educating herself about it. She subconsciously implies that there cannot be a problem if she’s the one who’s “accepting” him. The morality that she’s crafted over the years — of being outspoken and right in her household — crumbles under the weight of heartbreak.  

It’s like she was in denial about her family all along so that she could sustain the illusion of being that fiery and clutter-breaking heroine from the movies. When push comes to shove, however, she is jolted by her own passiveness. This internal crisis — where a seemingly strong woman is only superficially plucky — prevents Dhadak 2 from becoming a reductive love story where both are ‘equals’. It also keeps the focus on Neelesh as the protagonist and driver of his destiny. In other words, she becomes the careless adaptation to his original film. Triptii Dimri struggles to convey the depth and contradictions of Vidhi, but the writing allows the viewer to decode the blank spaces. It allows the film to work — and walk — more than it doesn’t. It finds a middle ground between subtly straying and blindly following. And in doing so, it remakes the potential of a lose-lose situation: losing the baggage, losing the fear of cast-iron comparisons. After all, the heartbeat of Dhadak 2 is its own, even if its body isn’t.