DEAR ZINDAGI AND MENTAL HEALTHCARE / FILM FATALE: COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU BUSINESSLINE

DE-STIGMATISING THERAPY

Dear Zindagi’s patient-doc sessions – debatable and unconventional though they are – mark a rare effort by a usually indifferent Bollywood to normalise mental healthcare

By Anna MM Vetticad

This is not a review of Dear Zindagi. I wrapped up that job on the day of its release. This column is devoted to one aspect of the film: the portrayal of mental health.

Those who have seen Dear Zindagi would know that Alia Bhatt plays Kaira, a talented cinematographer who harbours a deep-seated resentment towards her parents. She is also so afraid of being hurt in romantic relationships that she withdraws from each one before the man she is dating has a chance to first back out. When sleep goes AWOL from her life one day, Kaira turns to a clinical psychologist — Dr Jehangir Khan, played by Shah Rukh Khan — for relief.

As an American TV serial junkie and Hollywood buff, I am used to watching therapy sessions on screen. They have ranged from the realism of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, where Sergeant Olivia Benson gets help after being abducted and held hostage by a violent sexual predator, to the comical money-mindedness of Dr Linda Freeman in the Charlie Sheen-starrer Two And A Half Men, and the OTT unprofessionalism in Anger Management starring Sheen with Selma Blair.

Hindi cinema, for the most part, has alternated between ignoring/avoiding mental fitness and swinging wildly to the other end of the spectrum with harmful caricatures, ignorance and the insensitive labelling of mental illness as “paagalpan (lunacy)”. In that context, Dear Zindagi is gigantically significant.

In a nation where a “dimaag ka doctor” is widely seen as a doc for extreme situations, here is a woman in therapy despite displaying no visible signs of what Indian society might consider a health problem. She is not apparently severely depressed, she is highly functional and a successful professional to boot, she is lively, she appears to be enjoying life, and her issues with her parents are likely to be seen as non-issues in a culture that requires us to canonise and deify our madres and padres.

Of course she also does not bear any of the physical symptoms Hindi cinema has traditionally dished out to audiences: wild hair, unkempt look, flailing arms, screaming or complete silence. The seeming normality of Kaira is, to my mind, what makes Dear Zindagi almost revolutionary in the Indian social context.

This brings us to the patient-doctor sessions in Dear Zindagi. If your vision is not clouded by SRK’s sexiness as Doc Jehangir (forgive me for the frivolous aside), it should be clear that what is depicted here is not conventional therapy. For one, Jehangir’s informality with an emotionally vulnerable youngster may make for fun cinema but could cause misunderstandings in the real world.

Now, since I have not been to a therapist myself, I have spent the week speaking to friends who have, and to psychologists and psychiatrists. One friend tells me that if anyone made a film literally recounting her conversations with her therapist, “it would be the most boring film in the world”. Others agree. Instead of the banter between Kaira and Doc Jehangir, imagine a narrative that foregrounds long monologues from a patient with occasional interventions from a professional listener who actively stays in the background. Such a film would almost certainly occupy a less commercial, less mass-targeting space in Bollywood despite SRK and Bhatt’s mammoth star appeal.

The question we must confront then is about the pluses and minuses of a trade-off between authenticity and cinematic licence to make a popular film on a hitherto untouched subject. No doubt Dear Zindagi de-stigmatises therapy and the quest for emotional well-being sans sermons. The film’s resulting entertainment value gives it the potential to reach a large number of people. Is this positive a sufficient excuse for any inaccuracy in the portrayal of those sessions?

Writing for the website Scoopwhoop, Mumbai-based clinical psychologist Sonali Gupta objects, among other things, to what she sees as Jehangir in Dear Zindagi suggesting solutions to Kaira. She says: “We don’t want clients pursuing therapy in the hope that therapy is a quick fix, where therapists give advice and enlighten you with wisdom. As I always say, there is no right or wrong, it is the client who chooses his path and leads the therapy process, while the therapist plays the role of facilitator.”

Gupta has initiated a crucial debate. Without for a moment presuming to know more about therapy than a therapist would, consider this though: My takeaway from this film as a viewer was the opposite; for me a lasting memory from Dear Zindagi is of the doc pointing out to Kaira that it was she, not he, who arrived at her answers.

It is possible other viewers may see it differently and start visiting clinics with incorrect expectations, thus adding to the patient misconceptions that therapists have to clear. Yet the film would prove worthwhile if it aids even one individual in overcoming their mind blocks against therapy, while simultaneously generating public discussions, which in turn may prod Dear Zindagi’s writer-director Gauri Shinde, or perhaps another filmmaker, to work harder at making that next script even closer to reality yet equally entertaining.

Until then, Shinde will hopefully acknowledge this criticism while accepting the well-deserved kudos coming her way for dragging therapy away from the realm of old-style Bollywood “paagalkhanas (lunatic asylums)” to a non-intimidating space that you and I and Everyperson might enter without fear.

(This article was first published in The Hindu Businessline’s BLink on December 3, 2016.)

Link to column published in The Hindu Businessline:

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/dear-zindagi-destigmatising-therapy/article9404845.ece

Related Link: Anna M.M. Vetticad’s review of Dear Zindagi

http://annavetticadgoes2themovies.blogspot.in/2016/11/review-448-dear-zindagi.html

Note: I’m happy to inform you that Film Fatale has won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award 2015 for ‘Commentary and Interpretative Writing’. You can click here to read all the Film Fatales published in 2015 (and from the launch of the column in February 2014): 

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/author/anna-mm-vetticad/article6316861.ece Thank you dear readers and Team Hindu Businessline for your constant support. J Anna

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/DearZindagi/

REVIEW 448: DEAR ZINDAGI

Release date:	US: November 23, 2016. India: November 25, 2016.
Director:	Gauri Shinde
Cast: Language:	Alia Bhatt, Shah Rukh Khan, Kunal Kapoor, Ali Zafar, Ira Dubey, Yashaswini Dayama, Rohit Saraf, Aban Deohans, Atul Kale, Angad Bedi, Aditya Roy Kapur Hindi

Two points. Dear Zindagi is clearly straining at the formula-ridden Bollywood straitjacket to give us a refreshing take on love and family, and for the most part it sticks to its guns. In the end, it does succumb to the pressure to bow to perceived public demand with passing mentions of what we have come to consider inevitable in every Hindi film, but the ride up to that point is so rewarding so often that it is tempting to look past those needless moments.

Writer-director Gauri Shinde’s Dear Zindagi comes four years after her remarkable debut with English Vinglish. If that film brought the charismatic Sridevi back to the big screen as a leading lady after a 15-year hiatus, this one redefines the concept of hero and heroine in Hindi cinema.

Dear Zindagi revolves around Kaira (Alia Bhatt), a talented young cinematographer in Mumbai who despises her parents, appears confident in her romantic relationships yet is ridden with insecurities about the men she is drawn to. Those insecurities lead her to deliberately hurt her boyfriends before they get a chance to hurt her. It does not take a degree in psychology for a viewer to figure out her behaviour patterns, but Kaira is naturally confused by her fears. She ends up seeking professional help, and with some wise counsel, finds her answers herself.

When one of the biggest stars in the history of Bollywood appears on screen about 40 minutes after the opening credits, it goes without saying that this is an extremely unconventional film. Bhatt’s Kaira is the focal point of the story from start to finish whereas Shah Rukh Khan – playing her therapist Dr Jehangir Khan – surfaces towards the latter part of the first half and is nowhere to be seen in the concluding scene.

In a male-obsessed industry still tending to subordinate women in most mainstream projects, this is a decision that shows guts on Shinde’s part and Khan’s evident willingness to experiment. That other MegaKhan, Aamir, took a similar gamble with rewarding results in Taare Zameen Par (2007), and this is a winning aspect of Dear Zindagi too.

SRK gets less screen time but owns every scene he is a part of. In fact, Doc Jehangir enters the picture just as the film is sagging and appears to be repeating itself. His arrival immediately lifts Dear Zindagi. It sags again occasionally thereafter, but never when he is around. Besides, there is such warmth in Kaira’s interactions with the Doc that it envelops the rest of the narrative too.

It is worth mentioning that Khan in this new phase of his career when he is acknowledging his age gracefully, showing us a dash of gray and a whiff of wrinkles, is looking hot.

Kaira explodes in anger at one point when someone describes her as a pataka (firecracker). Well, that’s precisely what Bhatt is – a pataka with pizzazz and verve. What makes her so impactful is that she has had an internal journey with each of her roles so far, and not so far allowed that journey to be overshadowed by her attractive personality. Kaira is simultaneously exasperating and endearing, and Bhatt remains in control of that difficult blend throughout.

Still, the film needed more matter to wrap around these two lovely stars, and Dear Zindagi too often does not. Some of that comes from the failure to build up the satellite characters who are Kaira’s go-to people in times of need. We get that she is pre-occupied with her own emotional struggles to the point of not noticing their problems, but that is no excuse for the writing to neglect them too.

Who is Fatima (Ira Dubey) beyond being a mature, married friend? Who is Jackie (Yashaswini Dayama) beyond being a sweet, supportive, possibly younger friend? Who and what is that chubby male colleague beyond being chubby and funny? Who is her brother Kiddo (Rohit Saraf) whom she loves, beyond being her brother Kiddo whom she loves? Who and what are her boyfriends Sid (Angad Bedi), Raghuvendra (Kunal Kapoor) and Rumi (Ali Zafar) beyond being a good-looking restaurateur, a good-looking producer and a good-looking musician?

(Spoiler alert begins) And then there are those two oh-no moments towards the end – you know the kind that make you say, “Oh no, you too Dear Zindagi”? One of them seems to go along with the traditional view that characters played by a major male star and a major female star must inevitably be attracted to each other if they interact long enough in a story; the other underlines the essentiality of a man in a woman’s life to make her feel complete. Both are fleeting suggestions, but they pull down the film’s assuredness about what it is trying to say until then. Oh no, you too Dear Zindagi? (Spoiler alert ends)

For this and other reasons the film is inconsistent and intermittently lightweight. Yet, there is much else to recommend in Dear Zindagi.

The use of music, Amit Trivedi’s breezy tunes and Kausar Munir’s conversational lyrics are lots of fun, as are Kaira’s many amusing interactions with her friends. DoP Laxman Utekar fills the film with pretty frames of Goa beyond what we are used to seeing of that picturesque state, and is just as imaginative in his focus on Khan and Bhatt’s faces. Watch out for the closing shots of Bhatt on a beach.

From an industry that usually treats parents as deities deserving to be worshipped, it is also unusual to get a story that does not ignore these gods’ feet of clay, especially considering that Dear Zindagi is co-produced by Karan “It’s All About Loving Your Parents” Johar.

Above all, it is nice to see a film making an effort to destigmatise patient-therapist interactions, in a portrayal far removed from the “paagalkhanas (lunatic asylums)” of an earlier Bollywood era. 

Dear Zindagi then is a mixed bag. I loved SRK in the film, Bhatt is always a pleasure to watch, the story visits many themes that are uncommon in Bollywood, and several of the discussions are either witty or insightful or both. Overall though, the film comes across as being not enough because the writing needed more substance.

Dear Gauri Shinde,

You broke the mould with the delightful English Vinglish. Since you have defied convention in so many ways this time round too, you may as well have gone the entire distance without worrying about the consequences. We believe in you. Please do have faith in our faith in you.

Regards,

A genuine well-wisher.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	149 minutes 53 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/dear-zindagi-movie-review-incredibly-cute-alia-shah-rukh-khan-need-a-more-consistent-script-3123586.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/DearZindagi/