Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995, Indian)

In Yash Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, the romance between Raj (Shahrukh Khan) and Simran (Kajol) is framed by the typical Indian battle of tradition against contemporary society – contemporanity, in this case, that is defined almost exclusively by foreignness. After twenty years in London, Simran’s father still calls the Punjab home, and when his daughter falls for desi Raj during a month-long trip through Europe, he immediately packs up his family and heads “home” intending to marry Simran off to a proper Indian boy, hoping to stop the encroachment of the West by physically relocating to the East.

While the story and performances are both fairly strong, with Raj and Simran’s Swiss adventures in the first third of the filman entertaining highlight, the real meat of the film is the tension that plays out in the love story once the action arrives in India. It is fascinating to watch Khan, the ultimate Bollywood heartthrob, attempt to convince Simran’s father that he is Indian enough to marry his daughter.

It’s also interesting to compare DDLJ to a more recent Khan romance, Kal Ho Naa Ho, to see how much foreign-set Bollywood films have changed over a few short years. The entirety of the latter film is set on foreign soil (in this case, New York City), and the characters are as comfortable conversing in English as in their “native” Indian languages. Both the women and men dress primarily in Western fashions, and the heroine is as focused on career matters as she is on family and romance. In less than a decade, these seemingly surface affects demonstrate a deeper blend of cultures that has become naturalized in members of younger Indian generations.