The Hindu Business Line : Is it the complete picture?

The old line there’s no business like show business hovers on the periphery of all conversations relating to movies, even if it sometimes remains unstated. All over the world, audiences are linked to the people who give them movies in many ways. But the overwhelming feeling is the one that underlines the ‘Us and Them’ principle. They make movies; we see them. And if they need to keep us coming , they better make us like them.

First-time director Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance is a sharp-eyed observation of Bollywood, told through the story of two ‘strugglers’ (Bollywood-speak for dewy-eyed beginners, who want to become the Next Big Thing) who are ‘outsiders’, played by Farhan Akhtar and Konkona Sen Sharma.

Neither of them fall into the conventional hero and heroine category. Maybe Zoya has too much insider knowledge about the heartbreak and despair that accompanies a million people who strive to reach the Holy Grail, and fail. Or succeed partially.

Another feather in Farhan’s cap

Farhan, who cemented his position in filmdom as the guy who can do anything — scriptwriter, producer, director, singer — adds ‘actor’ to his CV with his sister’s directorial debut. He plays the newcomer who will do anything (and that includes deceiving his girl-friend and cosying up to the starlet’s mom, who used to be a big star back in the day) to get ahead, without a trace of irony. In real life, Farhan is a privileged insider. Father Javed and stepmom Shabana make a power couple. Javed is the lyricist of choice, an acerbic TV show judge and chat show guest. Shabana picks and chooses her roles, and is impressively articulate on things that matter.

Konkona makes us less uncomfortable, because she is made much more likeable. We feel sorry for this starlet who is on call for her producer when he is in the mood to take a break from his marital bed. We feel more sorry for her when she finds out that her co-passenger on this journey to the top has turned out to be a liar and a cheat.

Farhan may be a greyer character (which is why no successful Bollywood star agreed to do the role; after seven years of casting about, Zoya zeroed in on her brother, not only because he was the only one who would be secure enough to do this sort of role, but also because he earned his acting chops in one of last year’s biggest success stories, Rock On), but even he is drawn with wry affection. He is shown as a guy whose circumstances turn him into a bit-of-a-creep, but he is not, very importantly, all black.

Now Zoya has joined the ranks of successful insiders. Luck By Chance has been admired and more importantly for Bollywood, it’s made money. If your movie makes the Box Office happy, there are good chances that you will be given another movie to do, because your financiers will hope that their new venture will perform similarly. Zoya has tasted the first level of celebrity-hood that success brings with it: appearances on prime-time shows, interviews in mainline newspapers, and all the other trappings that come with a hit.

Zoya knows her subjects well

Apart from the lead pair, other characters play parts that you can vaguely recognise; the down-on-his-luck producer, his trophy wife, the deluded director, the on-the-sidelines entrants waiting endlessly for a break, and the ever-hopeful small-town girl willing to be ‘compromised’ for the long-promised leading role. They are all there, sketched with authenticity and intimacy, and the delightfully detailed back end viewing.

But what makes LBC a less than great film is the unwillingness of the director to go out on a limb. She stops short of going all the way. Is it because she felt that going any further would be disloyal to the people she’s grown up with? Or, in a smart move, she desisted from brutal honesty because that would put viewers off?

Again this is true globally — you can’t have viewers dislike the lead character and still hope to have a hit. We need to like or even love our movie stars. Too much reality makes them too real. Then they become Just Like Us. When they play fictional characters, it’s fine to paint them dark. But when they are playing themselves, we are quite happy to see them shine. In fact, that’s the only way we want to see them.

In a sharp cameo in LBC, Shah Rukh Khan plays himself, lecturing Farhan on the importance of remaining grounded, even if he gets super-successful. This happens in a tony night club, where SRK has just made a starry entry, flanked by bodyguards and some unidentified hangers-on, as he heads straight for a cordoned-off VIP corner. That much is fine. But Hrithik Roshan, who plays a star with no qualms about dumping people who made him rise in the first place, cuts too close to the bone.

The only reason these stars play these near real-life parts is because they are real-life friends with the filmmakers; Farhan has directed both Shah Rukh’s Don and Hrithik’s Lakshya. But even they presumably didn’t want to play the lead, because they didn’t want to be shown in the sort of ‘bad light’ that we don’t want to see them in. That’s double-layered irony indeed.

Even more significantly, Shah Rukh’s playing of himself in the Priyadashan-directed Billu is only as much a send-up as we can handle. To all other intents and purposes, in this latest Shah Rukh production, Sahir Khan is Shah Rukh. On set and in real life.