Devdas is a film of extremes. It features lush, dream-like, fantastic sets, three larger-than-life superstars in Aishwarya Rai, Shah Rukh Khan, and Madhuri Dixit, and some of the most beautiful song and dance I have seen in any film. And yet, despite all that, it is a simply dreadful film.
The blurb on the DVD box describes it as "The saga of a man who loved, loved, and just loved." I would say rather that it is the story of a man who was self-absorbed, abusive, and just pathetic. Devdas (Shah Rukh), returning from ten years abroad, is reunited with his childhood love Paro (Aishwarya). But his family rejects their plan to marry, and Paro agrees to marry a man whom her parents find suitable. Devdas declines the opportunity to elope with Paro on the eve of her marriage, and writes her a harsh letter, which he immediately regrets. After that he attempts to drown his misery in a bottle, spending his time in the company of a melancholy courtesan Chandramukhi (Madhuri). Chandramukhi actually does love Devdas, though one must wonder why, as he is little more than a narcissistic, simpering drunk. Meanwhile Paro's married life has not been much of a picnic - her husband, it turns out, has no interest in her at all, and married only to look after his household and his children. Paro and Devdas have a couple of pathetic reunions, and the film trundles ponderously on to its predictable and overwrought conclusion.
Paro and Chandramukhi are exemplars of one of the most grating of movie archetypes, the beautiful woman who showers unwavering love and devotion on a singularly undeserving man. In one of the film's more absurd sequences, Paro and Chandramukhi meet, and sing a song together ("Dola re") in which they join their voices in praise of Devdas. Even leaving aside the unlikely scenario of an aristocrat's wife inviting a tawaif into her home - such bold acts of egalitarian taboo-breaking are common and forgiveable in the movies - the song is a stretch, as it is hard to imagine how a downer like Devdas could really be "in the bindi on my forehead" or "in the jingle of my bangles." Devdas spends so much of the film lying about, moaning, and spilling liquor - more booze ends up on his clothes and on the furniture than in his mouth, it seems - that it might more believably be said that he is "in the ache of my forehead" and "in the crud between my toes." The film's ending might be designed to draw tears, but from me it drew rather a sigh of relief, and mild consternation that it hadn't come an hour and a half sooner.
From what I have seen, Bollywood fans either love this film or hate it. From where I sit, it totally, utterly failed. Many of the comments that I've read defending Devdas seem more to be praising the film that Devdas could have been rather than the film it actually was. Anything of depth that it might have had to say about the nature of love or the human condition was lost in the opulence of the sets, the glitter of the superstar cast, and the many poor judgments made by the director, Sanjay Leela Bhansali. While Madhuri is as dignified and excellent as she ever was, and Aishwarya is passable, Shah Rukh turns in a ridiculous performance that is bombastic and overwrought even by the standards of high melodrama. Shah Rukh Khan's performance doesn't amplify emotions - it caricatures them.
The film has one redeeming feature: the gorgeous songs, which keep the DVD in my player as I watch them again and again. Madhuri - one of the most delightful dancers that Bollywood has ever produced - is absolutely breathtaking in Devdas, one of her last performances before the hiatus that she has unfortunately taken since her marriage. Her finest moment in the film is her introduction, the mesmerizing "Kahe chhed mohe". She is simply sublime. "Dola re," which I mentioned above, is not the film's best song, but it is anthropologically interesting - to me it reads as a passing of the mantle from Madhuri to Aishwarya - from the last decade's queen of Bollywood to this decade's. Other musical highlights include the drinking song "Chalak chalak," and "Maar daala," Chandramukhi's declaration of love to an ungrateful, distracted Devdas.