Darr

Rahul is obsessively in love with Kiran, whom he knows from university. She does not even know who he is. He carves her name into the walls of his house, calls and hangs up without speaking, and treats her marriage to Sunil as a betrayal of himself. He follows them on their honeymoon. The subject is not love but obsession mistaking itself for love. Rahul never once accepts that he has been rejected; in his head the relationship is already mutual, and all of the violence comes out of that misreading. The form joins thriller to Indian melodrama: there are songs, but they are placed inside the scenes of threat, so the music does not relieve anything here. The most cited thing about the production is the casting. The part was offered to others first and turned down because it was a villain; Shah Rukh Khan took it. The single line the character stammers has remained in circulation in India ever since. With this role and another like it in the same period, Khan became one of the few Indian actors to reach stardom by playing villains at the start of a career. Yash Chopra directs. Sunny Deol plays the husband and Juhi Chawla plays Kiran. Who it is for: viewers curious about nineties Indian thrillers and early Shah Rukh Khan. Who it is not for: anyone who will find the film's view of obsession troubling; the narrative periodically invites pity for Rahul, and that choice is contested.