'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ (Hindi)
Director: Zoya Aktar
Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Aktar, Abhay Deol, Katrina Kaif and Kalki Koechlin
This film is destined to live in the shadow of her brother’s genre-defining ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ because its target demographic is largely the same. Where Akash, Samir and Sid went to Goa on vacation, Zoya’s trio takes trips to Spain. They don’t rent scooters anymore; they rent vintage convertibles and live in villas that would entice the least materialistic among us.
The film begins with Kabir’s (Abhay Deol) engagement to Natasha (a hilariously uptight Kalki Koechlin), a Park Avenue princess who may live in present day Mumbai but shops in London and has priorities from a past decade. Arjun (Hrithik Roshan), the high power, high energy, Wall Street trader equivalent, is every executive cliché rolled into a single bite of Japanese speaking sushi. He nearly misses the trip because of work and constantly refers to retirement at 40 and is fortuitously multilingual.
Imran (Farhan Akhtar) is the Greenwich Village artist who sold his creative soul to the advertising industry and writes biscuit jingles that his friends mock. The troika’s excuse to set off to Spain is a bachelor party for Kabir. But it is patently obvious that the trip will become the most fundamental detour in their life’s journey.
The film is not without its poignant moments. The titles, with Abhay flying first class, Arjun and his meticulously packed luggage flying business and Imran’s hurriedly thrown together rucksack in coach chatting up a stewardess, clearly segment and define the character types we are dealing with. The tension between Imran and Arjun when they first meet is palpable and Arjun makes a quip the slimness of Imran’s paycheck – a perfect example of an instance in which we inflict careless wounds on friends.
The Arjun-Laila (Katrina Kaif) romance starts off on the right note as well – with Imran making the first move while Arjun silently watches in the background. But with Laila, the player seems to have met his match and she aptly takes the lead in her relationship with the Arjun who remains woefully inarticulate when it comes to wooing.
The two most honest moments of the film belong to Imran — one in a post coital curl up where his partner has no clue what he is confessing and the other in a confrontation with his estranged father. The camaraderie and in-jokes are easy to identify with, but the gag that elicits the loudest laugh comes from outside the friendship – ‘Saare jahaan se achcha’ playing over the slow motion walk to a skydiving plane. It is a subversive dig at patriotism and an indication of what this film thinks about existing holy cows.
This film, in all its beauty and splendour, worships at only one place – the temple of consumerism. The characters in the film may tell you to follow your dreams and live in the moment, but what the film truly preaches is ‘want’. Everything that they touch, perceive and experience (even sadness) is so beautiful that we are enticed into believing that we deserve the same.
When DCH was released, we accepted it with open arms because of our wide-eyed optimism. After a decade spent in a mostly capitalist boom, our generation is now a slightly jaded. So, we’re slightly more wary of the goods that Zoya Akhtar is selling in her sophomore effort.