Locations in Europe: Amsterdam
Storyline
Star(s): Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukerji, Rishi Kapoor, Kirron Kher, Rati Agnihotri
Songs/Dance: India and Amsterdam.
Indian/ International Crew: Indian and international
Language: Hindi
Director/Producer: Kunal Kohli (Director); Yash Chopra and Aditya Chopra (Producers)
Line Producer/Executive Producer/Associate Producer: Siddharth Anand (Executive Producer); Sanjay Shivalkar (Line Producer)
Film Location Analysis
By Ranjani Mazumdar
Hum Tum actualises travel through the professional work of the two protagonists. Rhea and Karan are constantly on the move, and their relationship is built on meetings and encounters in Amsterdam, New York, Paris, Delhi, and Mumbai. There are two significant moments with respect to European space in the narrative. The first is the actual wandering around Amsterdam when Rhea and Karan have six hours to kill before boarding their flight. Both decide to get out and see the city.
In this first European section, we see constant navigation to highlight Amsterdam’s iconic buildings, museums, cafes, and other attractions. The Amsterdam segment also includes one of the film's most popular songs, “Ladki Kyun,” situated in the form of a conversation between Rhea and Karan. On screen, we seamlessly move into sites and spaces beyond Amsterdam. When she is looking for different sites, Rhea carries a map with her. Amsterdam’s well-known canals, buildings, the royal palace, the concert hall, etc. were picked based on a tourist consciousness. The Rijks is a well-known museum, housing nearly 8,000 paintings by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Vermeer, and others. A site of regular exhibitions, the museum draws visitors from around the world. While Karan is more interested in walking the streets, Rhea drags him to the museum, which provides spectators with a glimpse of the interior. The canals, another visible marker of Amsterdam’s urban layout, appear several times, as do other sites like the giant chess board at Max Euweplein, a square in Amsterdam named after a Dutch world chess champion, and the Church of St. Nicholas, which combines different architectural styles and is located in the older part of the city. A distinctly different feel to the romance narrative is provided by two strangers wandering through the iconic layout of the city with constant banter. According to director Kunal Kohli, "a lot of tourism is packaging dependent, and a film's shoot definitely promotes tourism." (https://www.hindustantimes.com/bollywood/we-should-promote-indian-cities-filmmaker-kunal-kohli/story-bvPukpI13QCIWrwcN50qJJ.html).
The stop-over navigation of Amsterdam is not restricted to the city alone but to sites just outside the city to capture a sense of the country. The walk with windmills in the background and the Scheveningen Pier at the Hague take us away from the city to see different kinds of iconic associations linked to the Netherlands. The Scheveningen Pier edges into the North Sea and is a popular site for events like music performances. Rhea and Karan can be seen walking against a stream with windmills in the background. These windmills have had an iconic place in landscape paintings and other forms of visual culture, and by drawing these sites into the mapping of Amsterdam, the film adds different kinds of layers to the spatial imagination of the city. Tourism to Amsterdam increased after Hum Tum, indicating how the film’s ability to clearly lay out the highlights of a city proved to be important for audiences to sense the attractions presented on screen.
After three years have passed, Paris is the film's second European destination. However, what we see here is not actually Paris but a simulation of the city. As a result, rather than displaying the city's iconic sites, we are forced to observe a fragmentary relationship to street corners, the exterior of a boutique, an apartment, or the greenery of a park. This deliberate sidestepping of iconicity was linked to budget issues that prevented the production team from visiting both NYC and Paris. Both destinations are therefore presented without any adherence to framing iconic sites, even as stock footage of both NYC and Paris is used to announce these cities. The Parisian section does not have the feisty conflict that shapes the navigational imagination of Amsterdam. Rhea has lost her husband Sameer (Abhishek Bachchan) in an accident and is a changed person, carrying a sadness within her. Paris is therefore quieter, and the song "Chak De" is set in a park that is generic and not easily identifiable to Indian audiences watching the film. However, during the song, we see Concert Ge Bouw engraved just below the triangular pediment of the historic building standing in the background. The use of a well-known concert hall was perhaps the most explicit indication that Amsterdam was standing in for Paris. This performance of a "foreign" or European location is framed as a combination of interior and exterior spaces: the airport, inside a boutique, a photographer's apartment reflecting a contemporary design, and neighbourhood street corners. What is different here is the role of the production designer in carving out an imagination of Paris. In the Amsterdam sequence, the city, with its iconicity, dictates the movement of the two protagonists. The language of "emotional cartography" operates in these two segments in distinctly different ways.
Additional Information & Links
https://bollyspice.com/10-years-hum-tum/
https://www.rediff.com/movies/2004/may/29hum.htmhttps://wherewasitshot.com/hum-tum/
Tourism
