Luck by Chance (2009)

Directed by: Zoya Akhtar
Music: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy
Lyrics: Javed Akhtar
Starring: Farhan Akhtar, Konkona Sen Sharma
Rishi Kapoor, Dimple Kapadia,
Juhi Chawla, Sanjay Kapoor,
Isha Sharvani, Alyy Khan,
Arjun Mathur

Continuing my saga of ‘Watchalong Reviews’, I go from one film which showcased the Who’s Who of the film industry to another in which everyone who is anyone makes an appearance. It’s as different from Naseeb as chalk from cheese, but every bit as entertaining, even if the humour is dark and the tone more serious. Perhaps this is why this film doesn’t have as much of our banter as usual.

The credits show us the ‘unseen people’ – the light men, the makeup artistes, the spot boys, the canteen workers, the tailors, the extras – everyone, without whom the industry would not function. But soon, we are playing ‘spot the star’, with actors, directors, musicians all playing a version of themselves. We even spot ‘Maganlal Dresswallah’, who used to be a famous costume supplier for films in the 70s.

Luck by Chance opens with Sona (Konkona Sen Sharma) – like many other youngsters with stars in their eyes, Sona has come all the way from Kanpur to try her luck in films. She lands up at the office of a small-time producer, Satish Choudhary (Alyy Khan). Screen test? What screen test? He asks her. It’s a film-maker’s eye that can spot a star. And he’s spotted one in her. But she would have to keep meeting him regularly. “Tum samajh rahe ho, na, main kya keh raha hoon?” She does.

 

Three years later, Sona is still an extra, struggling to survive. 

 

[We are too busy looking at Aamir Khan. He looks good. Shalini decides he would do well in a period film.]

The scene shifts to Vikram (Farhan) who’s attending Nand Kishore School of Acting, where the instructor (Saurabh Shukla) is exhorting them to “feel”. 

[We agree that Farhan looks very young and that Saurabh Shukla is such a ham in this film. Shalini loves that he is one.]

A montage of ‘training’ scenes – horse riding, action, photo shoots, script reading, even dancing –later, Vikram is ‘graduating’. [We are struck by the fact that Farhan's Urdu diction is pathetic.Obviously, his father's influence hasn't rubbed off on him.] Present is character actor Mac Mohan (playing himself) to share his experiences with the batch of aspiring actors.

 

When free, Vikram hangs out with his friend, Abhimanyu Gupta (Arjun Mathur). Sona lives in the next flat, and one day, Vikram makes her acquaintance. Abhi tells Sona that Vikram has come from Delhi to make it big. “Aap kataar mein hai” she tells him. "You are in queue."

 

Romy Rolly (Rishi Kapoor) is mounting his new film, launching his younger brother, Ranjit Rolly (Sanjay Kapoor), as the director and a new heroine, Nikki Walia (Isha Sharvani). The hero is Zafar Khan (Hrithik Roshan), Romy’s protége, and now, a huge superstar.

 

We also meet Mrs Minty Rolly (Juhi Chawla), who believes in lucky numbers and lucky stones, and Neena Walia (Dimple Kapadia), Nikki’s mother.

 

Meanwhile, Vikram and Sona keep running into each other – at studios, at auditions, outside Abhi’s flat. Their shared struggle brings them together. Vikram makes Sona laugh and soon, their friendship turns into affection, perhaps even love. They find in each other a friend they can confide in. Sona has been acting in small roles, and in regional films, but she’s waiting for her big break. Choudhary is headlining a new project, she says, and will soon sign her as the parallel lead. Vikram makes no judgement; it's good that you  have someone in your corner, he tells her. You are special.

 

Unfortunately, Sona is about to get her dream shattered. But Vikram gets an unexpected break – when Zafar walks out of Romy’s film mid-way, and Romy is forced to look for a new hero, Vikram is shortlisted due to a lucky happenstance. Sona had left his photos behind at Choudhary’s during their fraught meeting, and Pinky (Sheeba Chhadha), Choudhary’s wife and Minty’s sister, takes them to Romy. Vikram's audition is also a success, thanks to his prior meeting with Neena, and despite Romy’s misgivings, Vikram becomes the unanimous choice. And soon, an overnight star.

But just when everything looks hunky-dory, it looks like Vikram’s house of cards will come crashing down.

Or will it?

Luck by Chance is a satirical look at the Hindi film industry, with its superstitions, hypocrisies, insider clubs, nepotism, etc., laid bare. In the 70s, Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Guddi exposed the truth behind the glitter in a gentle, humorous manner through a fan and her screen idol.In Rangeela, Ram Gopal Verma looked at a young background dancer who dreams of making it as a heroine. In ‘Luck by Chance’, debutante director Zoya Akhtar also looks at the film industry through the eyes of two strugglers, Sona and Vikram. But this is a darker film.

 

Both outsiders to the industry, though Vikram comes from a family who can support him until he gets a break. Sona, on the other hand, is strung along by a man who exploits her dreams; she struggles to pay her bills, playing bit roles here and there to survive. But what Zoya does, and very well indeed, is to show us this world without judgement. “This is how it is,” she seems to be saying, neither glorifying the struggle nor defending the indefensible.  

Shalini and I had a discussion over what the difference was between the Sona-Choudhary relationship and the Vikram-Nikki one. Wasn't it the same, Shalini wondered. I disagreed. For me, while both relationships were consensual, Vikram's and Nikki's relationship was one of equals. Neither was manipulating the other into an affair. Whereas the power imbalance between Choudhary and Sona made the relationship exploitative.

Zoya’s scripts have always been humorous. Here too, several of the dialogues are laugh-out-loud funny, but like a rapier, cut deep. There is the plot itself that underlines how 'Bollywood' is still very much a family business that runs on relationships. There are the many insider jokes (about writing scripts from Hollywood film DVDs; about how heroines are disposable; about pushy star-mothers; about how the story is the least important part of the film; how scripts are changed at the last moment to suit the whim of a star... ), and old Hindi film songs are woven in beautifully as well. Zoya boldly wades into the nepotism debate (long before it became a topic of discussion, mind you), talks about sexual harassment and working conditions, and shines a light on several of the more unsavoury aspects of the big bad world of films.

 

Arjun Mathur (Made in Heaven) has a small role as Abhimanyu, but he nails both the struggles of an outsider, and that of an artiste whose craft is more important to him than fame. We also loved the cameos. (The list is quite long: Aamir Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Karan Johar, Javed Akhtar, Kareena Kapoor, Raj Kumar Hirani, Reema Kagti, John Abraham, Abhishek Bachchan, Vivek Oberoi, Ranbir Kapoor, Boman Irani, Shabana Azmi, Rani Mukherjee, Dia Mirza...)  

But especially Anurag Kashyap, who appears as a script writer. In one scene, he gives an alternative when asked to whitewash the ‘anti-hero’ and make him heroic – giving Rishi as Romi Rolly the chance to tell him “Hey, Institute! I’m not making a film for the festival circuit.” [Anurag’s first few films were critically acclaimed commercial failures.] 

 

And Akshaye Khanna who, in a one-minute cameo, and without saying one word, managed both to make us laugh and underscore how failure means that no one will give you the time of the day. 

 

Hrithik Roshan makes an extended cameo as superstar Zafar Khan. This is possibly one of his best performances. The glee on his face while he’s expressing faux-regret over the phone; the fury at having to be at his mentor’s beck and call; the dawning realisation that he's made a strategic mistake in his career; the scene where his anger spontaneously vanishes at the wholehearted adulation of slum children at a traffic signal…

 

Hrithik looked like he was thoroughly enjoying himself – even his dancing had a looseness and joy that has been missing awhile now, and Zoya presented him with a freshness and innocence that made him very likeable. She also uses his character to make some very pertinent points – the lack of logic in film scripts; the competition that steps in when you aren’t looking; the all-pervasive 'image' that one is beholden to; the veneer of gratitude that falls away when failure comes knocking and other opportunities beckon...

Dimple. One scene is enough to show Dimple’s acting chops – the scene where she excoriates her daughter who's oblivious of her own privilege. It’s a searing scene, and Dimple was fabulous, her hurt, her fury, her bitterness all bursting out of her like a volcano.

 

Juhi, too, is a fine comic actress, and it’s really sad that the industry never exploited her flair for comedy. As the superstitious producer wife, she was brilliant. 

 

Her relationship with Romy, her husband, is built on strong foundations despite her silliness.  But this film truly belonged to Rishi Kapoor, Farhan Akhtar and Konkona Sen Sharma. [Shalini and I are willing the Universe to inform Zoya that she should cast Farhan and Konkona together again.]  Rishi is amazing as Romy Rolly, a producer who’s discovering how fickle friendships are in the industry. 

 

He’s at the mercy of almost everyone – the hero, the heroine, the heroine’s mother… and you realise once again what a fine, natural actor he was. There's one great scene in which his response to everything that is said to him is "Kya baat hai!" The various intonations that he brings to those three words are a master class in acting. He also shares a great chemistry with Dimple Kapadia, and honestly, that’s another pairing that we would have loved to see again. 

Then, Farhan. Vikram is not like Sona. He’s willing to grab the main chance. Whether it is taking his aunt’s grandfather clock without her permission so he can get into an AD’s good graces, or charming Neena so he can get close to Nikki, sabotaging a competitor’s audition in the friendliest manner or having an affair with Nikki because it’s expedient… 

Farhan plays the opportunist very well and says the most humorous lines in the most deadpan manner. As Shalini remarked, he treads the fine line between sincerity and sly opportunism very well indeed. While Zoya does not glorify Vikram’s behaviour, we both agreed that he’s not the cad that people say he is – he’s just a struggler doing what he can to survive in a cut-throat industry. It is also a very nuanced character; he sincerely cares for Sona, but he sees the opportunities that being with Nikki can offer. For him, she's one step up the ladder of success. He is cool, deliberate and calculating. But he doesn't seduce her; it's she who comes after him. There is no profession of love; it's a consensual affair of convenience. When it blows up, it is not Nikki's heart that is broken; it's her pride. It's a stinging indictment of what it takes to make it, or even just survive in a remarkably cut-throat industry.

Vikram is also remarkably consistent in his views – he reminds Sona that if she has to succeed, she must do what it takes. What’s even more surprising (refreshingly so) is that he doesn’t judge Sona for the choices she makes and doesn't stop him from either liking her or respecting her. 

Finally, Konkona Sen Sharma – what an actress! Why do we not see more of her? Her Sona is in a relationship with a man who’s taking advantage of her. She walks into it with her eyes open, but the power imbalance makes it clear that it is not a relationship of equals – it is sexual exploitation. Her love for Vikram; her feeling of betrayal, which is even more cruel than when her lover betrays her; her inherent strength when she picks up the pieces and begins again, albeit in a different way – Konkona says a lot without saying much. 

The music of the film by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. The score is beautiful and we loved everything about it. As we did the colourful sets, especially the circus sets (Rambo Circus) used for Baawre, picturised on Hrithik and Isha in the film.[If you wondered why Isha was signed for the role, I wager it was for this one dance sequence.]

 

What made the film what it is, however, is Zoya's writing. And what Shalini and I thoroughly enjoyed about this film was the female gaze that Zoya brings to her characters. In any other film, however sensitively handled, we have discovered (through the many, many films we have watched together) that a ‘happy ending’ usually means that the hero is happy. It is very rarely that you see the woman have a happy ending, independent of the man. 

 

Here, Sona calls Vikram out for his opportunism – even his apology is all about himself. What’s even better is that she’s not angry at him; she still cares for him, she understands him, but she has found her own definition of success. She doesn’t have to accept him back to be happy. As women this was very satisfying to watch.