Ae Dil Hai Mushkil- my take on the movie (with spoilers!)

 I think sometimes the reason I like Horror so much is because the things that are scarier than monsters under the bed, or demons hiding in the shadows, is the conflict we feel within ourselves. Our feelings can hurt us; actually break our hearts and destroy our lives.

The monsters under our bed, they’re probably not real. Even if they are, the harm they cause us won’t last as long as a broken heart does. One doesn’t really recover from a broken heart so readily. It can last days, months and sometimes even years.

It’s a torture that we inflict on ourselves because we cannot control who we feel for and who matters to us. When those feelings are not reciprocated, the hurt is far worse than any physical injury. It’s about living with gloom, the persistent ache in the chest, the feeling of despair that nothing could come close to what you felt for that person.

Heartbreak is the worst feeling in the world. The fear of falling for someone and ending up with such a suffering is far worse than horror movies.

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil is the kind of movie that isn’t forgettable mainly because it touches on a subject that we can all relate to. At one point or another, we may have fallen for someone who didn’t return the love we had for them. That heartbreak, that one-sided love, is what is all the movie is about.

In fact, the worse feeling in the world is seeing the love of your life, marrying someone else. Then its when you plead for them to reciprocate your love. And then it is seeing them walk away from your life, permanently. That is also what the movie is about.

My first thought after watching the movie was- this is what Karan Johar had wanted to make ever since he got into direction. Since Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, he has been been trying to tell a story of ‘incomplete’ love, but couldn’t dare to showcase a movie without the archetypal, sappy, bollywood ending.

But who doesn’t like a happy ending? To be honest, while watching ADHM, I almost did want it to end on a happy note, just because...just because.

Ae Dil… is bold enough to be realistic. Yes, the guy loves the girl, but she had always made it clear from the very beginning, that she only saw him as a friend. Whereas in Kuch Kuch Rahul realizes that he does love Anjali, even though in the very beginning he tells his mother that ‘you fall in love only once, and marry only once’, he quickly changes his tune when he meets Anjali because she has become more womanly now. You know, his type.

That was my one problem with Kuch Kuch… That Rahul readily forgot Tina, his first love and wife, and that Anjali had to change who she was so that Rahul could be attracted to her.

For me, Ae Dil was more realistic. Sometimes when a guy likes a girl, it so happens that the girl doesn’t like him back and only sees him as a friend. There may be a very fine line in the friendship between a girl and guy, but I am so glad that Alizeh didn’t relent until the very end and told Ayan, even as she was dying, that she only loved him as a friend.

The movie has all the elements that make it memorable- good actors, impeccable acting, memorable songs, but most importantly, a compelling, pragmatic story. The first half may be a bit slow, developing the story between two friends, who grow so attached to each other- one even more so. It’s about two people who learn to grow out of their shells, together.

Ayan wants to sing, but needs to let go of his inhibitions. Alizeh needs to learn to forgive and be with the true love of her life, again- Ali.

In the second half, even though these two characters are apart, their love for each other is palpable throughout. Ayan has fallen deeply in love with Alizeh who is now married to Ali. He meets poetess Saba, who helps him enrich his singing career and even gets into a relationship with her. It is not until he meets Saba’s ex-husband, that he realizes the value of ‘one-sided’ love. He calls Alizeh, who gets super excited to finally receive his call.

They rekindle their friendship, but Ayan ruins it all again- why can’t Alizeh feel the love, he has for her?

They separate again. In the meantime, Ayan becomes even more successful, while Alizeh has left her husband. Ayan searches for her and finds that the love of his life is dying. He does what it takes to be with her and towards the end, has another confrontation with her.

Alizeh is dying, but she still can’t give Ayan what he wants from her- the love she had for Ali. What follows is the cliched airport scene, except Alizeh fakes a respiratory attack to have her deplaned. In the ambulance, she finally tells Ayan- ‘I friend you’. That’s the closest Ayan will have to an ‘I love you’.

The end is a tear jerking moment wherein Ayan ends his interview that makes him reminisce about his love for Alizeh. He sings in her memory, tears in his eyes. Even after all this time, even after achieving all this success, he has not forgotten the girl who helped him sing with his heart- a broken one.

Perhaps that was the scene that neatly ties up the movie and you walk away from it with a heavy heart. Because you’re finally shown that there is a side of love that can be so hurtful, so pure, yet it can give you a kind of satisfaction and happiness, knowing that you have at least loved someone.

Even if it is one-sided, it is the best feeling in the world that opens up the shell you had encased yourself in.

That, for me, was what Ae Dil Hai Mushkil was all about.