(2002, Hindi) The Moon comes to Earth to take away its breath. Melodrama and melodies, singing and dancing, glamorous people caught up in tragic circumstances, a spectacle of costumes in India unfurl and swirl through director and co-screenwriter Sanjay Leela Bhansali's three-hour Bollywood movie, adapted from Sarat Chandra Chattopadhay's fiction.

After spending ten years in London and having become a lawyer, handsome Devdas Mukherjee (Shahrukh Khan) returns home to his adoring mother Sumitra and harsh father, but he first goes to see his childhood sweetheart Paro (Aishwarya Rai), who has kept a lamp lit like the unquenchable love in her heart for him but refuses to show him her face because he only wrote her five letters during his absence. After teasing her, saying she is vain and unsophisticated, he confesses that all that time he has burned like the candle of her lamp.

The story pits Devdas's family of landlords - his jealous mother especially opposes the marriage of the lovers - against the lower social standing of Paro's bride-selling parents; out of spite for her neighbor's intransigence, Paro's mother Didi, who hurls a curse upon Sumitra that her children will produce no sons, is determined for her daughter to marry a richer man than Devdas.

Angered over the attitude of his parents but unwilling to displease his father further, Devdas departs, sending Paro a letter in which he says there cannot be any further love between them beyond friendship. In renewing a friendship with his former classmate, Chunnilal (Jackie Shroff), Devdas is introduced to the beautiful courtesan Chandramukhi (Madhuri Dixit) for the purpose of distracting him from his heartache.

Regretful of his last letter to Paro, Devdas returns to their village only to arrive just as Paro's wedding procession is getting underway; in a passionate fit he wounds her in the forehead, scarring her like the Moon. Her marriage to a wealthy, older man with children from a previous marriage designates her (changing her name to Parvati) as stepmother and the lady of the manor but granting her no physical relationship with her husband.

Entering the picture is an evil schemer Kalibabu (with whom Chandramukhi has bet that Devdas will return to her), intent on "checkmating" his four opponents. Drinking to excess in order to forget Paro and tolerate Chandramukhi (who has fallen in love with him), Devdas dying of alcohol poisoning reflects on how his life has been a series of leave-takings at the urgings of others: leaving his village for London, leaving his family, leaving Paro (who tried to get him to leave off drinking), and finally leaving life.

Take it or leave it, I found this epic extravaganza to be excessively long.

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