I was asked by a friend to watch this movie, and upon their constant nudging, I gave in, to be honest, and questioned our entire friendship after the movie. My first reaction was just why? Why did the Bollywood industry want to show this? Why would you invest billions in showing a story that, yes, happens quite typically in South Asian countries? It is not something you want to preach. I have always associated movies, as you know, with some kind of hidden lesson behind them or some element that resonates with me. Looking back, this movie is about a typical rich boy in a patriarchal family involved in drugs; his parents are concerned but also let him do anything he wants because “he is a boy.” If a girl depicted this behavior, I feel like this movie would have been banned. The other main character is a girl; she’s shy, submissive, and a perfect girlfriend. In essence, she is the perfect dream for any man; she is shy, has no strong views of feminism, and instead lets the guy get away with everything. The tale is a classic love story, where the girl is the damsel in distress, and the guy has a very bad past but ‘saves’ the girl and becomes a man. The cinematography and the overall direction are quite intriguing as they depict the norm accurately. I was pretty confused watching this movie as it has very questionable features, and your initial reaction would be just to get up and leave, but looking back at our class discussions, I feel sometimes media shows you everything the way it is, without glamourizing it so you see how wrong it is. The movie either was hated or loved. There was no grey area. Though I sincerely, deeply despise the movie as it goes against all my morals and values, I hold high regard for it; I feel like this is the only Bollywood movie that serves two purposes, depending on how you watch it. It reinforces these stereotypes but at the same time shows you how we as a society have made a path for this kind of men to thrive and molded women to be as accepting as possible. So, is this actually a bad movie, in essence?
I believe that this movie did no good at all. If anything a toxic relationship was romanticised and a sexist male lead was glamorised. I might’ve agreed with the point of view that it shows how we have still made way for men like kabir singh to exist in the society, but honestly when Preeti decides to go back to him at the end of the movie even after everything he did to her, this clearly showed how men get a free pass no matter what they do and hence, this movie ended up being more of an encouragement for men than a lesson.