Iconic Bollywood romance marks 30 years of nonstop run at Mumbai theatre

The Indian city’s Maratha Mandir has been holding regular screenings of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge since it released successful 1995.

A theatre successful Mumbai is celebrating 30 years of screening a much-loved Bollywood romance that has go India’s longest-running film.

On Monday, Maratha Mandir theatre successful Mumbai, the fiscal superior of India, volition people 3 decades of regular screenings of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Bravehearted Will Take the Bride), which changeable actors Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol to superstardom.

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The film, wide known to fans arsenic DDLJ, redefined modern Hindi romance and continues to gully hundreds of cinemagoers to its greeting screenings with its communicative of young lovers bucking contented since its merchandise connected October 20, 1995.

“I person seen it astir 30 times … and I volition proceed watching it,” Mohammad Shakir, 60, told the AFP quality bureau arsenic helium bought a summons for 40 rupees ($0.45).

A moviegoer checks his telephone portion lasting beside a poster of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge astatine Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir theatre [Indranil Mukherjee/AFP]

Manoj Desai, the caput of the cinema located adjacent Bombay Central Station, told AFP that weekday crowds thin to beryllium made up of assemblage students and young couples.

“On Sundays, you volition find astir 500 people, adjacent aft 30 years,” said Desai.

Clash of values

The film, which acold outstrips the five-year tally of the 1975 action-thriller Sholay (Embers) astatine different Mumbai theatre, revolves astir the opposition betwixt the much wide values of second-generation Indians overseas and the blimpish values of their parents.

Desai said it was communal for audiences to interruption into cheers and applause during the film’s climax, erstwhile the heroine runs alongside a moving bid into her lover’s arms.

“This is the goosebump moment,” Desai said. “The begetter letting his girl go, saying she won’t find a amended spouse to walk her beingness with.”

It is simply a connection that continues to resonate with younger viewers, adjacent those who were not calved erstwhile it was released.

“In our procreation today, we often spot transactional relationships,” Omkar Saraf, 23, told AFP. “But successful this film, the leader crosses each boundaries to triumph his emotion with nary expectations.

“We person watched it connected television, connected our mobiles, but the large surface gives america goosebumps.”

A country from the movie [Indranil Mukherjee/AFP]

‘Cultural monument’

Desai said 1 die-hard instrumentality of the movie had been coming to screenings for 20 years, portion for others, the movie had played a portion successful their ain emotion stories.

One mates watched it portion dating, earlier inviting Desai to their wedding. “They went overseas for their honeymoon – and came backmost to ticker the movie,” Desai said.

The film’s regular screenings were astir discontinued successful 2015, but backlash from fans meant the determination was reversed, the Hindustan Times paper reported.

Film professional Baradwaj Rangan said the movie had enduring entreaty successful a state inactive navigating the tensions betwixt accepted and modern values.

“It represents a definite constituent successful Indian culture, and that is wherefore it is inactive loved,” Rangan said, adding that it “perfectly captured” the friction betwixt 2 generations.

“The movie has go a benignant of taste monument,” helium said. “I deliberation it is going to beryllium playing forever.”