Its all about loving your mental health. Review on Dear Zindagi

It’s all about loving your friends. But then Gauri Shinde is not my friend in the conventional sense save for hurried message once on FB. But there is an innate desire to want her to succeed. She was fabulous in English Vinglish and her innocent heartwarming responses to messages makes you protective about her work.

Watching Dear Zindagi is like gingerly stepping into a forbidden area of the personal life of a young girl traipsing through a career pregnant with possibilities for her but she has no patience for the delivery of success. She wants it and now! Alia is a cinematographer(Not photographer thank you she corrects with bruised indignity) who wraps up a Singapore shoot as a stand-in for a DOP and yes has a night over with a colleague. She is established as the bored urban lass who cares not for broken emotions of restaurateurs or chocolatey musicians and has modern values. She dares to break boring stereotypes of girls in love drooling over music or oozing happiness over candle lights and desperately wanting to stay away from people who propose. May sound familiar traits and sufferings of a young girl in her 20s. But it has always been sought to be clamped and hopefully calmed down with marriage, trusting that it never resurfaces. But this block of angst is never cleared. It sits there festering as an unresolvable wound and ending up as mental health issue.

Gauri decides to propel this festering wound of a psychiatric situation right into the faces of society and urges the reluctant related stakeholders in our life to accept that it is ok to approach a psychiatrist and resolve emotional issues that come in the way of complete fulfilment of life.

That is the setting then for our young lass to accidentally bump into and then seek out a charming psychiatrist who wears torn jeans to drive home his messages about living life to the fullest and repairs cycles for young kids. The divorced with a kid( thought it is difficult to understand why he failed with his wisdom in his personal life), psychiatrist tries to bring semblance of order in the thoughts of the young girl and that for most makes up the rest of the movie and ends up in parts as a very smart witty docu-drama on understanding and reaching out and becoming aware of one’s own unresolved problems which apparently become the foundation of latent disturbed personality in the future.

There are really no high point markers towards which the movie speeds but looks like a leisurely unravelling of a slice of life of a disturbed young film creative. The movie is peppered with witty and genuinely impressive one liners and some stark reality checks on how youngsters today view well intentioned parenting, snapping at parents and generally taking things for granted.( Don’t let the failures of the past blackmail to current and ruin your future – the psychiatrist pronounces with a twinkle in his eye and you cannot help but allow a wow to escape your lips)

Alia is simply stupendous more than measuring up to the expectation of the young brash impatient blunt young girl who almost falls for the charming solution dispenser. Therein lies an almost unresolved tale as the director knowingly teases the audience having the pulse on the fact that superstar plays a psychiatrist with a charisma that cannot be ignored, age gap be damned.

Gauri leads a movie that moves along an inverted peak starting on a high, dipping badly into banter that almost sounds aimless at times and induces boredom into audiences which happily start looking up their messages and then take a leap forward as it the movie and its protagonist find their footing. There are very few high points in the movie and one gasps with delights in rare scenes like the one where SRK plays Kabaddi on the shore.

Sadly despite a charming screenplay, genuine intention and a robust screen presence of the lead cast the movie

fails to hold your uncompromising attention like the directors previous effort.

But that cannot take away from the fact that it will nobly contribute to people in society actually boldly and maybe even make it a style statement to seek out psychologists and psychiatrists contributing to dampening the increasing angst in our society. It hurts to say the movie will be a difficult watch for those who love a few hours of escapist cinema. But those who do, do applaud for Karan Johar for backing such clear winners on presenting social messages in commercial cinema and not expecting the box office to crackle. Bravo Karan and SRK and Alia can well look forward to sharing the awards at the year end with Anushka.

And in the meantime do love your life.