Alia Bhatt shines, even though Dear Zindagi is terribly superficial
I’ve often wondered what people mean when they say: "This film is a one-time watch". By definition, isn’t every film a "one-time watch"?
Maybe I don’t get it because I’m not a movie addict. I suppose the line makes sense if you have watched Deewar or Sholay 72 times. In the 1980s, it was the thing to say. This was one addiction to be proud of. You flaunted it like a medal.
Today, we have a range of entertainment options at our disposal; I doubt if anyone watches the same film several times over. Even while watching a film, one is constantly fiddling with the phone, checking out this and that. Forget about repeat viewing, we can’t even concentrate once on what’s playing on the screen.
Just concentrating on a film though is not enough. I watched Ae Dil Hai Mushkil with a clear head at ten in the morning. It was so pleasant and ephemeral that I don’t remember a single scene or the names of the characters.
This time, I’m back in the cinema hall and watching Dear Zindagi. This time, I’m determined to remember the characters’ names.
Alia Bhatt plays Kaira, a 20-something millennial who works as a cinematographer in Bombay. She has a boyfriend called Sid. There’s a love interest called Raghavendra.
A lot of fashionable upper-middle class names in the film. I’m half-expecting a Zoravar (uber trendy at the moment) to enter the frame at some point but it doesn’t happen.
Our movies and TV serials are obsessed with "business families". Sure enough, Kaira hails from a business background. She has a therapist, Dr Merchant, played by Shah Rukh Khan - his second "meaningful" role of the year, after Fan.
Shah Rukh plays his age, which is a masterstroke. It’s not something we Indian viewers are familiar with. Just the novelty of a hero playing his age makes this film a "one-time watch".
Rishi Kapoor was romancing debutants well into his 40s. Even Aamir Khan played an engineering college student (3 Idiots) in his middle age. Bollywood demands the willing suspension of disbelief from the viewer so often that by now our minds are conditioned to subtract reality from the narrative.
It’s nice to watch Alia and Shahrukh on-screen together. Shahrukh, at Alia’s age, was the manic one. In this film, he transfers his erstwhile manic energy on to Alia and is content to play a 50-something divorcee shrink who provides a steady stream of vacuous psycho-babble.
Apart from this, he has his this way of squeezing eye-drops into his eyes, which requires further suspension of disbelief. If you follow this cinematic style of eye-drop dropping, not one drop will remain in your eye. Don’t try this at home.
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| It’s nice to watch Alia and Shahrukh on-screen together. |
The shrink and patient have their sessions in various locations - on a boat, bicycling, strolling on the beach - which allows them to keep changing their clothes and the camera to capture picture-postcard Goa in all its repetitive prettiness.
Gauri Shinde exercises directorial restraint in several scenes and that immediately stands out. When Kaira tells her boyfriend: "I slept with Raghavendra", the boyfriend doesn’t lose the plot. He doesn’t start screaming or drowning himself in alcohol.
20-something millennials set high standards for themselves but aren’t sure of what exactly they’re looking for. Dear Zindagi captures this state of rebellious flux gently and with a feeling for nuance.
23-year-old Alia has made everybody sit up in her short yet extraordinarily prolific career. She lulls you into thinking that she’s playing herself, only to explode in pivotal scenes that jolt you out of your seat and think: "This girl can act!"
In Udta Punjab, where she plays the role of a sex slave and a pigeon for the drug mafia, her character lashes out in a stunning jet-stream of dialect and invective.
In Dear Zindagi, Kaira has an outburst where she hits out at her family - the provincial smugness of the Indian bourgeoisie and the lie of perfect parenting are both laid bare in a span of two or three minutes. Alia is getting very good at imbuing her characters with a hurting, fragile fierceness.
There are too many distractions in Dear Zindagi. The ordinary soundtrack distracts. The chocolate prettiness of Goa is plain vanilla. At two and a half hours, the film is too long. A dialogue-based indoorsy film about human relationships shouldn’t be more than 90 minutes.
For me, the model of a trenchant film about human bonds has to be Tanuj Bhramar’s Dear Dad, released earlier this year. Arvind Swamy plays a middle-aged father coming out to his teenage son.
The control was remarkable for a first-time director and the dialogue was warm yet razor-sharp. The sensitive subject of homosexuality is handled with minimal sentimentality and fuss.
With the Karan Johar-produced Kapoor and Sons and Dear Zindagi (Johar is co-producer here), the problem is that an old formula is altered ever so slightly to make a new formula for the changing times.
There are cracks in the family portrait, which are hurriedly and superficially dealt with. In the end, the family portrait is restored to its unearthly compact beauty. The cracks are papered over.
There’s more truth to art if you let the cracks in the china be.