So far never really felt like watching this movie, or it's original - Arjun Reddy. I'd heard a lot of debates on it and recently saw an interview with Ratna Pathak where she completely berated it. I wondered how bad can this movie be. We've grown up enjoying a lot of movies which glorify extremely questionable behavior on the hero's part. I remember some of these movies somehow made me angry, but in some cases I didn't even realize that there was something wrong till I grew up. DDLJ is a good example of this, especially since I loved Shahrukh Khan and thought Raj was the epitome of romance. Only later did I realize that some of his behavior bordered on perverted with his unwanted advances towards a girl on a solo trip.
Anyway so I braced myself to watch this movie - Kabir Singh and I couldn't believe how terrible it was. It was unabashed masculine toxicity. Within minutes of the movie the guy was almost about to rape a girl at knife point, and this was somehow shown in humorous light (and while reading a review I read that the audience actually laughed at this scene). And this was just one of many such weird scenes right at the beginning of the movie.
The relationship with the girl was another big problem. It was depicted as love at first sight, but significantly for the boy. The girl's feelings were completely irrelevant, she was more or less a piece of property that belonged to him and he marked as his possession right at the start declaring to a class of male students that they better steer clear of her, even though he didn't know her name nor what she wanted. He plants a completely uninvited peck on her cheek the first time he speaks to her and at some point plonks himself on her lap, as expected without checking with the girl if she's ok with it. To the girl's credit her facial do reflect the right level of alarm that anyone would feel at such intrusion of privacy. To make matters worse he decides who she should be friends with apparently "fat girls make good friends coz they are like teddy bears and are loyal. Pretty girls shouldn't be friends with thin girls."
Post this I couldn't bear to watch the movie. But the thought that this movie minted money at the box office and has staunch defenders is very worrying. That anyone can find such behavior acceptable is very hard to digest. Possibly reflects the predominant patriarchal mindset in our society where women are merely seen as a possession and not as individuals with independent thoughts, desires and aspirations.
There was this argument that the movie was only trying to show the character arc of a flawed person. But what I found problematic was the glorification and attempt to normalize such behavior. I've never liked Devdas as a character, but there at least I felt there was an attempt to depict a flawed and weak character.
My personal opinion on the movie is that it's perhaps one of the worst piece of cinema ever made.
