Review: Gauri Shinde's “Dear Zindagi” is a major misfire.

[Might contain spoilers.]

In one of the many, many exchanges in Dear Zindagi, Gauri Shinde's glossy sophomore film after her delightful debut English Vinglish, Shah Rukh Khan, playing a renowned therapist called Dr. Jehangir “Jug” Khan (why does every character who is a somebody in a Hindi film has to be ‘renowned’?), says, “Genius is knowing when to stop.” It's ironic that the line finds a place in a film that's about forty minutes too long in addition to being meandering and indulgent.

There were signs. There were signs. A rich and somewhat successful urban woman, Kaira, has emotional problems. She is dealing with stress everyday. She snaps at a guy who accidentally bumps into her in the park. She is an exposed nerve in the company of her boyfriends. She is popping pills. She is trying to decide between two projects with work environments she knows she won’t be comfortable in. We don't think she will make it through either of them. She is like a castle of cards that would fall apart with a gust of wind. Vulnerable, clearly in need of help.

When a film is titled “Dear Zindagi” and it presents a character like this one, we somehow get the idea that it will be dosed with a healthy amount of optimism. And here the dose of optimism presents itself in the form of Jug, the ‘cool doc’. A ray of light in a dark, musty tunnel. Jug understands her, helps her open up and open her windows to a more hopeful world slowly, one session every week. 

It is a film that keeps its ambitions low. To Shinde’s credit, she manages to do two things unique to a Hindi film: Approach mental illness as a serious subject as opposed to an overexploited joke, and build a narrative around the conversations the doctor and patient have. She also tries to get rid of the stigma surrounding therapists. (In parts, the film did look like an overlong advertisement for therapists. I counted at least four instances where we are told that it's okay to sometimes see them.) But the problem here is Shinde’s forced dialogue that tries really hard to be free-flowing while also trying to sound profound, often failing in this regard. Its conscious, self-congratulatory tone creates a barrier between us and the characters. It goes on endlessly without purpose, without saying anything even when the characters are constantly speaking. When Jug gives an example of trying out many chairs before settling for the best one to analogise Kaira’s failure of finding the right guy, it comes across as stale. It’s the sort of theory that doesn’t work in a film anymore only because it’s hackneyed. But Dear Zindagi loves it.

Image credits: www.indianexpress.com

After a while, the pattern became clear: One life lesson per session. While Kaira looks forward to it, we don’t share her eagerness. These sessions are sermons where anecdotes are shared and the past is brought up. There is a nod to Good Will Hunting and even a really tiny one to Analyze This. But the more inspired and original bits are drowned by the long stretches of dialogue before and after them. We crave for more plot, something to break this pattern. As we expect, Kaira’s nervousness is because of a memory that has tainted her childhood. Her vulnerability stems from it. These vital pieces of information, our key to understanding Kaira, come far too late and all at once. By then we are long past caring. Or maybe just I was. 

What made English Vinglish so charming was its sharp writing that, for the most part, avoided preachiness. Dear Zindagi openly embraces it. There are snatches of dialogue that are sharp, reminiscent of the kind of writing we saw in English Vinglish, but they vanish after the character of Dr. Jehangir Khan is introduced. With him comes superficiality. And superficiality has no place in a film that revolves around conversations. It ebbs the actors' charms. The performances are very good, but it’s a shame I could not warm up to them due to this.

Dear Zindagi is a hit-or-miss proposition, really. Those who can relate to the character of Kaira might appreciate what Shinde is trying to do here, but those who can’t might find it hard to adapt to the film’s didactic approach. It might prove to be effective for some considering the film is about a woman opening up to a therapist and is meant to be talky, but this sort of approach lacks shrewdness. Even in its final moments, Dr. Jehangir Khan wasn’t done with his life lessons. I lost count of the number of times I sighed out of boredom and just wished that they had gotten Goa’s characterisation right at least. 

(Not For Reproduction)