Bollywood & American Musical SD PDF

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A compare/contrast essay between Les Miserables and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge...

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Jennifer Peck MUNM-2413-300 9 April 2017 Bollywood & American Musical For this assignment, I watched the Bollywood movie Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and the American musical Les Miserables. Though both musicals told the stories of star-crossed love, they were wildly different in execution, realism, and style. One of the biggest differences in execution was the way that the music was incorporated into the overall plot. While the music in Les Miserables was a part of the story, the songs in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge seemed to be more of an addition. Songs in Les Miserables served to forward the plot, and characters ended the songs different from who they were at the beginning of it. In DDLJ, the songs amplified what was already occurring, and usually the characters did not change within the song. For example, take the song “Ho Gaya Hai Tujhko Toh Pyar Sajna” from DDLJ, when Raj and Simran realize that they love each other, and the song “A Heart Full of Love” from Les Miserables, when Marius and Cosette do the same. In DDLJ, the realization of love occurs right at the beginning of the song, even before the lyrics begin. The two realize that they love each other, and then throughout the song, are haunted by images of the other, reinforcing the fact that they have only realized the love when it was too late. In Les Miserables, Cosette and Marius meet for the first time and learn more about each other throughout the song. At the beginning, they are strangers and do not even know the other’s name; at the end, they have confessed their love for each other. Though this is an extreme example, it nonetheless shows the vast difference in the way songs are used for plot. Neither is necessarily better than the other, simply different.

Realism plays a huge part in the dissimilarities between the two. In the Bollywood film, the songs have their own kind of mood. The audience knows that they are not real, but accepts it as an element of the genre. No attempt is made to disguise the song as something a person would actually do. In the American musical, Les Miserables, the audience is asked to suspend disbelief and believe that the songs are a part of the dialogue. When a character begins to sing, it is simply words that he or she is saying, but put to music. This format is difficult to explain, since it is one that most Americans are so used to seeing in film. The characters in the film are unaware that they are singing, and the audience sees it as a continuation of the dialogue rather than a song. This reality split is seen clearly in the DDLJ song “Mere Khwabon Mein” and the Les Miserables song “Red and Black.” In the Bollywood piece, Simran goes from telling her mother about her dream, directly into the song. She is aware of the camera, dances to the music, and performs in a way that shows that she is aware that she is singing, both as the actress and as the character. Right before the piece “Red and Black,” the character Enjorlas is lecturing Marius on being late to the meeting. His lecture starts as spoken word and goes seamlessly into singing. Enjorlas has no awareness that he is singing, nor does he play to the camera or in any way indicate that there is music present. Finally, there is the difference in style between the two films. These two distinct musicals are, of course, very different in their thematic elements (Dilwale Duhania Le Jayenge is a lighthearted romantic comedy, and Les Miserables is the depressing story of love in the time of a failed revolution), which makes it rather difficult to look at them stylistically. Nevertheless, they can be compared by looking at the things that they have in common. In filming, I noticed that the Bollywood movie sometimes used cinematographic techniques associated with soap operas. When one of the characters in DDLJ heard bad news, or

was shocked (for instance, when the father heard that Simran had fallen in love with a stranger during her trip around Europe), the camera did a slow zoom onto his or her face. In Les Miserables, this sort of a shot would probably be cut from one angle to another, and zooms were not commonly used. While the Bollywood movie was more flashy, the American musical was more subdued and concerned with realism....