Alia Stands By Karan As He Gets Slammed For Kalank

Nothing succeeds like success. Nothing fails like failure either. This, Karan Johar has realized as  his  Wednesday release  Kalank , said to be his most expensive production  to date,  was slammed  savagely  from all ends.

This industry  celebrates the  failure of those who are successful.As soon as  news spread that Kalank  was  not being appreciated by the critics or  audience, the  industry began  to gleefully write  epitaphs  for Karan’s career.

“He’s finished. Dharma’s Karma is catching up,”a filmmaker told me.

From  the vast cast of Kalank  we hear  only Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt  are keeping in constant touch with Karan as  the  world turns into a mob-lynching nightmare for Johar.

He’s luckier  than Sanjay Leela  Bhansali. On  the morning  of  the  release  of Saawariya he was pacing up and down all alone in his home. Everyone  connected  with the  failed film had quickly moved on.

Kalank  true to its title, is a blemish  Karan  Johar’s  cast and  crew would  quickly like to forget.It won’t affect  Karan  Johar’s equity. But it is  a huge emotional  blow for a filmmaker who wanted to scale those steep epic  steps that Sanjay Leela Bhansali has gone  up.

But it’s okay to fail, Karan. Kalank is  not a bad  film. It’s just a failed film. It has plenty  to be proud  of. The scale at which the  sets are mounted  would  put James Cameron to  shame. The affinity to Bhansali’s school of filmmaking  is evident  in many details including the  bromance  song between Varun Dhawan and Aditya  Roy Kapoor which is a  remarkably  faithful  ripoff   of  Shah Rukh-Jackie Shroff’s Chalak Chalak song  in Devdas.

Alia Bhatt’s introductory  kite-flying song echoes Aishwarya Rai’s  introduction in Bhansali’s  Hum….Dil  De Chuke Sanam.

As far as homages  go, Kalank is a  decent aesthetic exercise  in derivative  filmmaking.What I really want to  ask you, Karan, is, why did you choose such a negative title   for  your film?Kalank means  a  curse. And now you  know  why.

Years  ago I  remember  Tanuja  Chandra’s Sungharsh  (which incidentally was Alia Bhatt’s first  screen  role, and she played  the child version of Preity Zinta) was  initially calledAndhera.
Too negative, said distributors. Did  no one advise  you against  calling your film Kalank?

Maybe you need  to get some friends who  will tell you  like it is.