Despite his debut film Kuch Kuch Hota being a big hit, filmmaker Karan Johar says when he watches the movie today he finds it to be based on an “unusually silly theme”.
Released in 1998, the romantic-drama starring Shah Rukh Khan was one of the blockbusters of the year. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai chronicled the story of a mother, played by Rani Mukerji, who leaves eight letters for her daughter before her death, so that she can unite her father (Shah Rukh) with his best friend, enacted by Kajol, as she believed he loved her.
“Actually, ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ is a very unusually silly theme. Don’t know what the mother wrote in those eight letters, how can a eight-year-old read that?
“But it was done with so much conviction, a mother has left eight letters, but kya likha hoga pehli, dusri chhitti may ki woh bachcha padh sake?” Johar said at the Jagran Film Festival here, last evening.
“He (the hero) says, ‘Zindagi may pyaar ek bar hota hai, shaadi ek bar hoti hai’, but he himself has fallen in love twice, got married twice. Everything was wrong, but it was written with so much conviction that it made sense,” the 44-year-old director said.
Johar said he was 24 when he wrote the film and was inspired by the cinema of Raj Kapoor, Yash Chopra among others.
“There was some innocence in films of those times, when we used to say ‘pyaar dosti hai, love is friendship’. I have made a film on the same theme but have updated its tonality… That film (‘Kuch Kuch…’) had an organic innocence,” he said.
“I was 24 when I wrote that film… But I can’t write the same film now. When I see ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ today or ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’ I myself wonder, ‘Why did I write this, how did I write this, from where these thoughts came to my mind?” he said.
PTI