Girls just want to have fun? “Excuse me,” Zoya Akhtar counter-questions. “Aren’t boys out to party hearty too?” With Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, premiered last week, the writer-director has achieved a smart gender-reversal of the chauvinistic portrayal of screen women as bubble-heads, badnaam Munnis and jawaan Sheilas. Men can be air-headed objects of desire too. Go on, admit it all you Munnas and Saileshes.
Conventionally, Zoya Akhtar, would have been expected to toss up a chick flick salad. Her debut-making Luck by Chance (2009) was a uni-gender, kabhi affectionate kabhie wry account of the Bollywood Establishment. Her main protagonist, a wannabe actor, was portrayed as a shrewd, Janus-faced operator. She opened up a can of worms, for sure, but the film remains undervalued since it laid an egg at the ticket windows.
Now that Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara has gained box office approval, it will be noticed that she’s actually pulled off a coup of sorts: she’s made a guy flick. It has clicked, no doubt, because urban viewers have connected with the often-juvenile-often-mature behaviour of its three leading characters, all male.
New Age guys, the three dudes deal with their professional as well as personal anxieties in the course of a road trip through Spain — echoing the Indian yuppy’s increasing tendency to jet off on Euro-holidays. They’re letting their hair down for a bit of soul-searching, and let’s admit it, premarital sexual shenanigans. And if one of them has water-phobia, his deep-sea diving coach happens to be a femme in shining latex armour. Now, when did you last see a male trembling with fright before a superior sporty woman? Probably never.
Like Sai Paranjpye’s three room-mates tackling their ticks and quirks in Chashme Buddoor (1981), the ZNMD “heroes” are credibly vulnerable. If a man’s frailties have been depicted before, it has been taken to the absolute extreme. Example: the tragic, alcohol-soaked Devdas culled from the 1917 story by Saratchandra.
Gratifyingly, extremities aren’t essential anymore. In fact, a normal fun-filled atmosphere was created by choreographer-turned-director Farah Khan with Main Hoon Na (2004) and Om Shanti Om (2007). Armed with cushy budgets, Farah Khan affirmed her identity as a lively and aggressive entertainer. She didn’t have to ghettoise herself as a vendor of woman-centric, issue-based arthouse cinema. Now, although, both the films were the biggest hits of their respective years, the major awards for Best Director went to males. Like it or not, prejudice still prevails.
The output of women directors, scriptwriter’s and associate directors (as in the case of of Loveleen Tandon for Slumdog Millionaire, 2008) are increasingly flooding today’s multiplexes, with movies as diverse as themselves. Yet the struggle for equality, recognition and respect continues. It still has to be acknowledged that they are moving way from that traditional, enclosed area in which women suffer nobly, shedding enough tears to fill up a jacuzzi. One night of errant passion would saddle them with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, or a lifetime of humiliation and sufferance. From Meena Kumari (Ek hi Raasta, 1956) and Mala Sinha (Dhool ka Phool, 1959) to ‘Lovely’ Laxmi (Julie, 1975) and Preity Zinta in Kya Kehna (2000), how they battled social ostracism!
The bright news is that the minority of women directors working in mainstream Bollywood cinema, today, are making the kind of humorous and emotionally — engaging films which male directors have all but deserted in favour of brain-bashing actioners, pseudo-romantic rigmaroles around the wedding shamiana and of course, horrorfests and what-boo-you.
To be sure, the larger filmmaking system is an old boys’ club, but there is a mounting awareness that women writers and film-makers mean business.They cannot be denied club membership. So Reema Kagti of Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd (2007) is into a cop thriller tentatively titled Dhuan. Sooni Taraporevala is completing her next script after her intimate look into a Parsi boy’s world in Little Zizou (2008). And Leena Yadav who directed Amitabh Bachchan and Ben Kingsley in Teen Patti (2010) is among the persevering directors who wish to make movies, revolving around males,without their peers or the audience saying that she’s a woman director.
It may take years, if not decades, to remove the gender stigma. It’s everywhere. In Hollywood, the term “woman director” persists. Be it for Kathryn Bigelow who nabbed the Best Film Oscar for The Hurt Locker (2008), a gritty probe into the American bombings of Iraq. It’s there, too, for Sofia Coppola who has been hosannaed across the world for Lost in Translation (2003) and Somewhere (2010). And it’s there for Catherine Hardwicke who kicked off the immensely popular vampire franchise Twilight (2008).
Frankly, be it in H-wood or B-wood, the number of frontline, happy-to-be-commercial directors can be counted on one’s toes and fingers. Never mind. Let’s at least salute the fact that they are making an impact. Frequently they have an edge over their male counterparts with their insights and candour. And, above all, they are no longer hesitant to say, “Hey, girls aren’t only ones who just want to have fun. Guys are no different. So where’s the party tonight?”