Intercast Weddings !!!
Two States is a simple clean sweet and entertaining movie, based on Chetan Bhagats’s Novel of the same title. The book and the movie have tackled the issue of intercast weddings in India and their acceptability in our society. Since I had not only read the book but found it Chetans one of the best, I could relate with the movie better and with greater acceptance.
India and the society, more so in north India ,has moved a long way over the last two decades to accept inter cast weddings and have even started accepting inter religion weddings. It’s a welcome change and while till few years back inter cast weddings always meant love marriages, today we are seeing plenty of arranged inter caste marriages too. In spite of the so called advancement and acceptance, such weddings still face a lot of hurdles and problems, from date and time of wedding, venue, dresses, rituals, menu, gifts, hospitality, customs and above all expectations and emotions. The intensity of difficulty varying from mild to even unmanageable depending weather the wedding is love marriage or arranged and on the stubbornness of parents and the say of the bride and the groom in the family.
Two States, explores the journey of love ,an affair of about three years and marriage between two MBA students, from different states, a Punjabi guy and a tamilian girl. Though the affair was smooth and the boy and girl, the best one could look for, the difference of states did create several, common, prevailing, relatable and expected hindrances. The differences between the orthodox culture loving tamilian family of the girl residing in Chennai and the estranged Punjabi parents of the boy from Delhi have been brought out maturely though the story has been further complicated a little by the bitterness and non speaking relations between the groom and his father
Arjun Kapoor has looked impressive as a Punjabi munda and has acted very well. This being his third movie, he has shown promising performance and one can look forward to him being one of the youngsters to do well in Bollywood in the near future. Alia Bhatt has looked very sweet and charming and has once again displayed good histrionic talents. But one expected more from her, especially in a KJ movie, as she failed to look like a Tamil girl, in looks, attire, mannerism and dialogue delivery. Amrita Singh and Ronit Roy have acted well as the grooms parents and Revathi and Subramanian have done justice to their roles of a conventional and traditional Tamilian couple.The story has been adapted very well from the book, maintaining the authenticity, and the screenplay and dialogues are strong, natural, and contemporary granting the movie flow and spontaneity. Songs are good and music along with the background score melodious. Karan Johars direction is good as expected though the glamour of KJ’s movie is missing, probably a deliberate directorial effort to maintain the authenticity of middle class. Editing is good with excellent cinematography, especially the wedding scene being very impressive, exotic and picturesque. The second half is a little dragged and could be shortened a bit.
Two States is a good entertaining movie specially for youngsters who have a great probability of landing in inter state matrimonial alliances
Brig Sanjay Kapoor VSM,Delhi