When Sandeep Reddy Vanga released his much debated film Animal in 2023, the response from the audience was quite polarising. As the central character, the ‘animal’ of the story, murdered hundreds of people with the background score of ‘Arjan Vailly’, it was almost as if the director was in awe of him, and that’s what was conveyed to his audience as well. The morality of the subject required a healthy debate, and that’s what followed up next, but this kind of discourse did not exist when Yash Chopra made his 1993 film Darr with Shah Rukh Khan, where the director tried to romanticise the main character’s unhinged obsession for a woman, and present it like it was a form of love.
Known as the ‘king of romance’, Yash Chopra tried to push the envelope in the many love stories that he made. In Lamhe, which released shortly before Darr, he tried to move beyond societal taboos that restrict love between those with a wider age gap. In Silsila, he presented the story of two star crossed lovers who were separated by marriage. So when he thought of making Darr, he saw it as the story of an “obsessed lover,” and not as the story of a mentally unstable man who needs help. His primary character here, Rahul, played by Shah Rukh Khan, is admired by Yash. When he carves his beloved’s name on his chest with a knife and has blood dripping down his body, the director is just too impressed with the gore to take his eyes off. He is so taken by Rahul that he even gets rewarded with a dream sequence in the Alps, which is Bollywood’s love language.
Shah Rukh Khan in a still from Darr.
One could argue that the film’s logical hero was Sunny Deol’s Sunil, but he just doesn’t come across as one for Yash is busy showering his love on Rahul. In fact, one can’t even argue that it is the audience’s perception of Rahul, or Shah Rukh Khan, that made him the most popular character of the film. The film was designed in a way where the audience would be enchanted by Rahul, and Yash made sure that it came across exactly like that. As per an interview with Honey Irani, who wrote the film, the film was always going to be more of a Rahul show. In an earlier interview with Film Companion, she shared that she suggested Sunny to take up Rahul’s part, but he didn’t want to risk his image. “When I narrated it to Sunny (Deol), I told him I personally feel you should do the negative role. He said, ‘Picture nahi chalegi. My image is different’. They were scared to take risks at that time. That’s how Shah Rukh became the best choice. He just grabbed it,” she said.
Rahul was the bad guy and it was evident to everyone. Yet, for Yash, he was the man who deserved the spotlight. In a chat with Yash Chopra before the release of Jab Tak Hai Jaan, Shah Rukh Khan spoke about Darr and described Rahul as the “protagonist who was kind of negative but was still passionate because he loved”. From killing cops, to attacking a man with a gun in the middle of the road, to peeping at the woman he is in love with when she is changing, Rahul had no redeeming qualities, but Yash tried to give him a few anyway.
Sunny Deol, Juhi Chawla and director Yash Chopra during the making of Darr. (Photo: Express Archives)
Early on in the film, we see Rahul speaking to his mother on the phone when his father walks in. The father is shocked because the mother has been dead for years and despite speaking to a doctor in that one scene, he doesn’t do anything to help his son. His only idea to get help is to get him married. In another scene, when Rahul bumps into an old friend named Vicky (Annu Kapoor), his demeanour shifts completely, and that’s when you realise that Rahul isn’t the loner you thought him to be. He knows how to make friends and mask his instability but apart from the few times you see him with Vicky, you never see this side of his personality, which makes you question if the world is being unreasonable with Rahul.
Of course, in the many years since the film’s release, Anand Bakshi’s lyrics ‘Jaadu teri nazar’ where he repeatedly sings ‘tu haan kar ya naa kar, tu hai meri Kiran’ have drawn a lot of flak. The idea that there is lack of consent here wasn’t considered a big deal in those days, as like most Hindi movies of the time, here too, the idea of stalking was completely normalised. Many films of this era went with the ‘naa mein bhi haan hai’ philosophy when it came to consent by female characters.
After the release of Darr, Sunny Deol was terribly upset with Yash Chopra and Shah Rukh Khan for he felt he got the short end of the stick, and he wasn’t completely wrong. On paper, he was the hero who saves the heroine over and over again, against the so-called bad guy but he hardly wins, until the end. In the film’s opening card, a voice over compares this love story to the likes of Romeo Juliet, Heer Ranjha but it isn’t Sunil’s love story, it’s Rahul’s.
Darr hasn’t aged well in the last 30 years. Since then, Shah Rukh has hardly played a bad guy on screen. He has played characters with shades of grey, but never an evil man. After his extremely successful return to the movies in 2023, the year which also saw the success of the aforementioned Animal, Shah Rukh, at a CNN News 18 event, spoke about playing a good guy who tells happy stories. But, he added, “If I play a bad guy, I make sure he suffers a lot. He dies a dog’s death.” His character in Darr does die but he doesn’t look like someone who suffered. It wouldn’t be fair to pull Shah Rukh up for a film that he did at the start of his career, but one can see that he still can’t find the words to justify why he played a hero-like stalker in Darr. For Yash, who was a man from a different era, Darr stands out like a thorn in an otherwise beautiful bouquet of films.
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