Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara — of Guilty Pleasures and Frightful Escapism

It is sometimes harder to criticize an otherwise inoffensive, fairly passable film like Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara, specially when ‘Bollywood’ produces far worse on a regular basis and despite the equally common self-congratulatory pieces in the media about the present state of the industry. But this current film precisely because it is fairly enjoyable at one level and a cut above many in this genre is an even better example of its industry’s ongoing malaise. If this is the ‘best’ the industry is capable of, at least following those complacent narratives, one should be very afraid for this industry. That is, if one is still invested in the idea of cinema as ‘experience’ and not simply consumption or entertainment of the disposable variety. If a film like Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara offers tonic for our souls we should be rather worried about the state of our souls! It is much like deriving spiritual solace from a Deepak Chopra ‘self-help’ narrative where nirvana is promised in return for doing really nothing or simply maintaining one’s life as it is with a little ‘aside’ for spiritual dialog from time to time. This is a program Madonna can sign on to (and has!). Similarly the pseudo-angst and faux-crises of Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara are therapy for those terribly unfortunate souls who find it very hard to cope with the pressures of deep-sea diving or face terribly anxiety before their sky-dives. The film is palliative for those Munch-inspired nervous wrecks who have to choose between vintage Chevys and contemporay SUVs as they plot their spiritual pilgrimages through the tourist resorts of Spain. It is panacea for those extraordinarily brave among us who have the fortitude to achieve transcendence against the odds in a bull-running festival. You only live once after all. Why not risk the Tomatina festival?

Once one gets past all the heavy philosophizing the film is quite alright! The first half, admittedly more plotless than the rest of the film, is really the better and more sincere one. It does not pretend to be anything other than a jaunt through Spain with bits of conflict occurring here and there. One excuses the frivolousness of it all as long as the film also stays at that level. However when it tries to turn serious it takes several missteps and in ways that stall the film quite a bit. Because the crises presented here are either completely banal or else totally contrived. Essentially this is a bachelor-party of a film that wants to play ‘spiritual guru’ every so often. It is not even very invested in the latter as a certain narrative flatness is maintained throughout. This again works for one half with its very modest gestures, the comedy track, the hints of greater drama. The three leads work with a certain chemistry. Farhan Akhtar is best suited for this terrain and not surprisingly gets some of the best moments in the film in more ways than one. On the other hand Hrithik playing a restrained part is not a bad complement either even if he seems tentative at points. Abhay Deol however is simply lusterless for the most part and despite getting enough footage. For all this the chemistry works and the film should really have focussed on these relationships. However Zoya Akhtar gets distracted by the scenery and the water-sports soon enough. She similarly introduces a somewhat unnecessary character with Katrina Kaif’s part (though presumably the lady’s unerring box office instinct justifies her presence in other ways). Beyond a point the linearity that was working just fine for the film is unhinged by the episodic consequences of such choices. The three leads are still central to the film but the chemistry suffers and the twists that are introduced allowing for more somber moments for the trio in turn seem too hurried or forced to register at any deep level. It cannot be said that the film is sunk by ambition but certainly Zoya Akhtar could have taken her Spanish vacation on her own time. Her work reconfigures some of the memorable terrain first introduced by her brother’s fine debut a decade ago but it is candidly not half the film Dil Chahta Hai was in any sense of the term (nor for that matter is any other that has followed in its wake). This is a pity because there were ways to reconfigure the male bonding of that earlier film in interesting ways. Even with the physical setting of Spain and all the activities here that are so incredibly indexed to a certain presumption of class and economic advantage the story could nonetheless have earned its crises and the eventual resolutions. It could have truly made its characters empathetic. But the director is truer to the rules and regulations of tomato-throwing. Indeed if you have the deal the leads in this film have you would not wish to be reborn!

Nonetheless if this film is still watchable it is because most others in its genre fail even at this elementary level. This viewer at least finds it impossible to sit through the vast majority of what is offered in the name of ‘multiplex fare’ or under the aegis of some banal label like ‘youth film’ and so on.Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara is a sad effort because it is yet again symptomatic of not just Bollywood’s lack of purpose but also the audience’s total refusal to foster a more intelligent cinema. Even as one decries the films on display one should equally fault the target audience here (the multiplex segments that drive the Bollywood ‘economy’) for its complete complacency about the arrangements of the present, its depressing political quietism, its utter lack of any compass of responsibility which would question to any degree this mad desire for consumption at all costs. This is in short an audience that rejects authentic ‘experience’ in cinema and in life. It is only devoted to maintaining the circulation of a consumption economy of which it has been the principal beneficiary and within the ambit of which cinema too becomes just another item on the hyper-market shelves of incessant audio-visual stimuli. Zoya Akhtar must at least be appreciated on this score for toning things down a little and not running her film by the same frenetic rhythms even if she otherwise feeds the same ‘multiplex desire’.

It is not that one expects film audiences to be political revolutionaries. Nor does one expect movies to be stirring manifestos. It is equally true that no hegemonic class is less than satisfied with the way things are in any age. But what one argues against is the sheer and unparalleled narrowness of vision exhibited in film after film, the extraordinarily shrunken (and shrinking still) field of vision which prevents one from focusing one’s lens on anything or anyone that does not conform to one’s very limited aspect of extremely privileged experience. The polemic here is not necessarily intended to advance the cause of mass cinema or anything as universal as that. It is not even a clarion call for rooted engagements in the medium (which ‘rootedness’ is never only about the national space in any obvious sense). One is quite willing to accept films like Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara on their terms. But couldn’t the purveyors of such cinema compromise a bit and offer just a little more empathy, a bit more literacy with respect to the greater socio-political parameters of their societies? One is not looking for a didactic film or even an instructive work in some more abstract sense. Is is however too much to expect something more than designer cinema? Is it that much of a light-year stretch to demand the same from the audiences in avenues of life not related to cinema? Consumption economies are certainly a global phenomenon by this late date but this hardly means that questions of responsibility fall in the very same ways on consumers in all such societies. This isn’t only about an ideological objection to consumerism but an expression of despair on the accompanying political irresponsibility that goes hand-in-hand with it in India (and by extension many other societies of the planet though not all). Consuming in London is not like consuming in Bombay because the socio-political fields are very different configured in each case. The ‘plea’ then is a very modest one for meaningful entertainment that does not operate with a certain blindness towards its overall social constructs. Once upon a time masala fare was defined as ‘escapist’ (by the very same social classes.. this must never be forgotten) and ‘mindless’. But even on its worst day this brand of cinema exhibited a certain understanding of the larger body-politic that is completely absent today. Even in the fairly pedestrian masala resurgence in evidence today the gestures might be rather stale and impossibly low-brow but there is nevertheless an acknowledgment, no matter how weak or debased in its formulation, of a greater socio-political contract. Multiplex cinema in its principal genres has simply been ‘on vacation’ in these matters for a couple of decades now. The exceptions here illustrate the general bankruptcy, not the other way round and especially so when one correlates these efforts with their respective box office results.

It would not have been too difficult to do a little more with Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara and thereby render it more ‘intelligent’. There is a compromise here that would have elevated this film without forsaking any bit of its box office success. But neither the film-makers nor the audience seem to be particularly interested in more. Expecting Zoya Akhtar to be her father’s daughter might be an impossible dream in contemporary Bollywood. Is it however that unreasonable to expect her to be just a bit more of her brother’s sister, at least with respect to Dil Chahta Hai? Is this really such a high bar? The same question should be presented to the audiences. Is it so impossible to exhibit just a little less passivity when it comes to the entertainment one chooses? Is it so very difficult to ‘experience’ cinema just slightly more than has been doing for so long? Can there not be a space in life for one to think and feel a touch more than one is ordinarily inclined to? Something to offset just a wee-bit one’s mindless consumerist choices?

Even as this piece might seem very harsh on Zoya Akhtar’s film it is meant to be a much more damning indictment of the class she represents. Her film is not a bad watch as sheer narrative. I have been trying to insist on this point. But it is certainly indicative of a larger rot in Hindi cinema’s popular imagination and suggestive similarly of a deeper irresponsibility in the classes that nurture such choices at every end of film production.