Princess Mythili, played by Sonam Kapoor, plays Vijay Singh’s love interest, and apparently runs a local NGO mitigating poverty through lavish gifts and other resources. Personally, I am distraught that, even today, films are subliminally engendering the idea that that girls are always inferior, and must ask for a claim in their familial property, while sons can accept it as their legal birthright. Rather, they are dependent on the magnanimity and charity of their fathers, brothers or husbands. Although the two boys ultimately do attain relatively equal financial rights, the undisputed yet skewed facet of the family dynamic is that the daughters don’t possess a natural right to any of their father’s property. What I would like to know is – why would a king that truly wants his kids to live harmoniously despite his infidelity fail to equally divide his property prior to his demise? Instead, he abandons all the younger children, relinquishing them to the mercy of his oldest son thus, he conceives intermittent jealousies, mistrust and hatred between his children. Thrown in the mix is a scheming employee who wants Singh’s property, a Brahmin lookalike of the monarch (also played by Khan) who comes to the palace and serves as King while Singh is injured by his enemies, a repetitive love story with Sonam Kapoor, and too many musical numbers to count.
She is relegated to a state of obscene inequality that is somehow normalized through consistent rushes of supposedly potent familial emotion.Įssentially, PRDP as a whole focuses on the life of Vijay Singh’s journey to self-realization, and reunion with his broken family of three siblings after the demise of his parents. Rather, the woman in PRDP is marginalized, unless portrayed in the role of a love interest or a subjugating wife who must share her rights with two other women. Barjatya’s assumption that this Hindu king’s polygamy and impractical desire to unify the children of warring wives, is attainable in today’s times, is disappointing frankly, this core concept of the film strips the merit of the entire premise, and undermines the role of a wife.
The late king’s ultimate aspiration is for all the children from the three wives to unite peacefully.
His second wife has a son, Ajay Singh, played by Neil Nitin Mukesh. Vijay’s father marries twice while also maintaining a third affair (resulting in the birth of two girls). Vijay is the undisputed heir and first-born son of the former king’s first wife. The film first introduces a monarch ruling several villages, probably populated by unassuming subjects who dote on their ruler, Vijay Singh (Salman Khan). Indeed, PRDP almost resembles a BJP-sponsored, RSS-directed family saga with the absurd, unrealistic twists of a typical Colors desi soap. Suraj Barjatya’s imposition of male-governed, majoritarian kingdoms somehow imposed onto contemporary India is inscrutable and misdirected. Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (PRDP) is an archaic, banal and regressive work that frustrates you with its implicit themes of patriarchal monarchy. Starring: Salman Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Swara Bhaskar, Anupam Kher, Armaan Kohli, Deepak Dobriyal Director Suraj Barjatya’s imposition of male-governed, majoritarian kingdoms somehow imposed onto contemporary India is inscrutable and misdirected.