Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara
 
   
Director: Zoya Akhtar
Year:  2011
Music: Shankar-Loy-Ehsaan
Duration: 155 minutes
Rating: 6.5
Aka - Life Will Never Come Again

It took me a while to get into the spirit of this Bollywood film and I never fully did. Certainly not to the extent that it seems to be loved by others (8.2 on IMDB. 4 on Ltrbx) not to mention the many awards that it won. But for too long it felt too much of a rehash of Farhan Akhtar's debut film 2001 Dil Chata Hai before it took on its own personality. Dil Chata Hai was a breakthrough film for Bollywood. At the time I wrote "The film feels very westernized – not just the characters, dialogue and to some degree the plot, but the filmmaking itself has a very western glossy sheen to it. To a large degree it appears to have shed many of the traditional melodramatic elements of Hindi films and this “surrender” to a non-Indian or perhaps more precisely urbane Yuppie Indian audience might not sit well with some." It was a huge success though and influenced many films that followed. It is about three friends from college who get together years later and go on a road trip to re-establish their friendship.




And Zindagi is about three friends from college who get together years later and go on a road trip. This film though is not directed by Farhan but by his sister Zoya Akhtar but Farhan had a hand in writing the script and their father Javed Akhtar wrote the poetry that one of the characters speaks. Javed is a very famous lyricist and scriptwriter. So it  clearly takes the genesis of Dil Chata Hai and dabbles with it, creates three new characters with their own issues - but at its essence it is still a buddy and road film. But unlike most buddy road trip movies that we are used to, it does not go for comedy and hijinks, but remains very grounded in reality. This even utilizes the same song writers that DCH did - Shankar-Loy-Ehsaan, whose music is much more global with various influences being fused into their songs. One song in which they merge Spanish and Hindi here is terrific.



Years before the three friends had all agreed that when the first of them got engaged they would go on a two week trip wherever the groom wanted to go and that they would each pick a sport that all three had to participate in. The film begins with Kabir (Abhay Deol - cousin of Sonny and Bobby and nephew of Dharmendra) proposing to Natasha and she accepting. Later in a very clever way we return to the scene and see it very differently. Imraan (Farhan) is fine with going but Arjun (Hrithik Roshan) initially begs off because he is too busy making money as a financial advisor. But eventually they all get to their destination - Spain. But time has changed all three of them and their friendship seems to have slipped away, frayed around the edges from those halcyon college days. In particular Arjun has become money and status obsessed and quite the jerk. Imraan has a secret agenda to find his birth father (Naseeruddin Shah) who he didn't know about until recently and who lives in Spain. And Kabir seems to be hiding doubts about the decision he made to marry.




At this point you sort of know where this film is going - there is no way that Arjun will continue to be such an unbearable ass and keep his shirt on and the other two will resolve their issues one way or the other. At this point it also becomes a beautiful travelogue as they travel by car through Spain. They missed Segovia much to my disappointment but cover a lot of ground and the cinematography is stunning of fields, sun flowers, cities and mountains. I would love to go back some day. Barcelona, Seville are waiting for me.




The first sport is deep sea diving and their instructor is also stunning, Katrina Kaif. Arjun begins to melt in her presence. Then on to a real festival - La Tomatina in Buñol - in which hundreds of people gather together and throw squished tomatoes at one another. It has an interesting background beginning in 1945 when real tomatoes were thrown in protest - evolved into a festival of fun- was banned by Franco a couple times but it always came back. Not a festival that I would likely indulge in. Next it is sky diving - again incredibly photographed - a sport I definitely would not indulge in - and finally of course the famous Running of the Bulls in Pamplona - maybe I would have 30 years ago.




As the bulls chase them down they all make life decisions. One drawback for me is that I never really got to like these characters all that much - I would not really want to go on a road trip with them - they were not that interesting and often sullen and tedious. They annoyed me more than attracted me. Next time make it three women on a road trip because Katrina was perfect. The most amazing thing to me was that they made this film for $6 million. Hollywood with three stars and sets in India, London and Spain would have made it for maybe $80 million?