P.S. – This is not a review but my thoughts on one of my favorite movies of 2009. Contains spoilers.
It’s very easy to laugh at people and ridicule them. You don’t need to understand people in order to do that. You just need a bird’s eye view and a good command over language to do that. But in order to laugh along with people or rather appreciate people, you need to understand them first. When friends get along over drinks it’s almost mandatory to make fun of someone or the other. But never does it happen that you ridicule or mock at anyone. That’s how you differentiate laughing with people from laughing at people.
The same analogy can be drawn to cinema as well. Quite many times we have seen cinema been made on cinema and almost every time we see Hindi cinema being ridiculed at in such movies. Very rarely do we come across a cinema which takes an objective look at Hindi cinema’s drawback as well as appreciates the power of the Hindi Cinema to stay alive. In spite of all its insecurities and mediocrity, Hindi Cinema deserves to be applauded for its survival. Luck By Chance, one of my favorite movies of 2009, is a movie which depicts just that.
Cinema for average cine goers is all about the on screen personalities. But for every second of on screen brilliance we have hundreds of off screen people working day-night without any kind of recognition. The brilliant casting sequence of Luck by Chance is a tribute to all such people. From the costume helper, not the costumer designer, to the chai wallah to the extras to the people who move sets and so on, Zoya Akhtar wishes to recognize the contribution of all such people in the whole process. For someone who loves his product, the whole process of creating that product is much dearer than the final product itself. My favorite sequence from this brilliant casting scene happens when we see fresh posters of Munnabhai being pasted. I have spent a considerable portion of my childhood admiring the art of pasting posters on the wall. In fact, as a kid, I dreamt of becoming some one who does that. How much fun it would have been to be the first one to see the posters – or so I used to think.
“Every once in a while it happens that a role is written for a hero which gets rejected by every conventional actor. A newcomer laps it up and creates sensation. And the rest they say is history.”
Says Karan Johar to Zaffer Khan(played by Hrithik Roshan) who is the superstar who backed out of the project which Farhan lapped up.
And this can be termed as the plot of the movie as well. Luck by Chance is the journey of a new comer till he obtains stardom.
The cameos introduced in this movie are the major highlights of the movie. None of the cameos is introduced just for the sake of it. Every cameo looks justified. And my favorite is the scene featuring Saurabh Shukla and Mc Mohan. The initial promos of the movie ended with the voice over by Saurabh Shukla – “In order to succeed in this industry, you need talent as well as luck”. And for me, this voice over loomed throughout the movie. It took me a second viewing to confirm that there was no voice over by Saurabh Shukla through out the movie and it was just one scene. Another stand out cameo is the one by Anurag Kashyap as the script writer of the unconventional movie. After all he is the best suited to write unconventional scripts in Bollywood today.
It was hearting to see Rishi Kapoor finally portraying a character with conviction. Somehow, I was never able to appreciate his performance in his older movies. For me, he always used to be dwarfed in each of his movies either by his co-stars or by the music. Finally, I found him dwarfing modern day sensations like Hrithik Roshan and Farhan Akhtar. The scene where he utters “Yahan to jee property ko hi property kehte hain” is one of the most spontaneous dialogue delivery of this year.
The movie is not devoid of the typical clichés either. But what sets it apart is the fact that each of those clichéd characters has a strong resemblance with his/her real life image and never is any of those presented in an undignified manner. Hrithik Roshan is the insecure superstar, Sanjay Kapoor is the failed actor turned director and brother of a famous producer. Dimple Kapadia essays the role of someone who had to pay a heavy price in order to make a name in the industry. And this is where it differs from other cinemas of its genre.
And then there are lead characters played effortlessly by Farhan and Konkana. Even though Konkana has spent considerable time in the film industry, she looked very convincing as a struggling new comer. The conversation between Farhan and Konkana where Konkana says “Isme tumhari galti nahi, kuch log hote hi aise hain” is one of the most logical and bold conversations presented on screen this year. How often do we see the heroine making the hero realize about his selfishness and the hero acquiesce in response.
What I didn’t like about the movie was the fact that even though the movie under production was labeled as unconventional, it looked more like a typical masala film. Zanjer, devoid of any song for the lead character, was unconventional for its time and so was Baazigar – movies which were lapped by relatively unknown actors after many established actors had refused it.
Luck by Chance is one of my favorite hindi movies of 2009 and perhaps the only hindi cinema which salutes the spirit of the hindi film industry. Bravo Zoya!
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