Bollywood: Why the success of 'Zara Hatke Zara Bachke' presents an interesting challenge to filmmakers

An ‘unexpected’ event happened this month. A mid-budget, non-superstar, non-action Bollywood film with middle-class characters set the cash registers ringing at the box office. The film is Vicky Kaushal- Sara Ali Khan’s Zara Hatke Zara Bachke. By calling its success ‘unexpected’, I don’t mean to denigrate the film in any manner. It is simply to point out that in the last two years, films like these are supposed to be meant for the OTT platforms. It’s assumed that the audiences only buy tickets for spectacle films like Pathaan or Adipurush. In fact, at the success bash of Zara Hatke Zara Bachke, Vicky Kaushal himself admitted, “Dinesh Vijan (producer) had every logical reason to bring the film on OTT. But he took that risk of releasing a film like this in the cinema halls in today’s times.” The unprecedented success of the film has surprised Bollywood and has also left them confused because they now have to rethink about which film goes directly on OTT and which one should head to the theatres.

The success directly challenges the assumption that the viewers are now only interested in superstar- and spectacle-driven, VFX-laden cinema. Zara Hatke Zara Bachke is a simple, entertaining comedy-drama set in the town of Indore, India. It is the story of a young Indian middle-class couple (a teacher and a yoga instructor) who decide to get a divorce for a special reason. Their families are also a crucial part of their story. This makes it a ‘family film’ too. But do you think the film’s success is just a fluke? Then what would you call the success of films like Bareilly Ki Barfi (2017), Badhaai Ho (2018) or Stree (2018)?

I look at all these films with a lens of cinema history. I feel all these stories about middle-class characters based in small towns are carrying forward the legacy of the middle-of-the-road-cinema of the 1970s. The films that co-existed with the larger-than-life movies of Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan. If we look back, 1970s revealed a fascinating journey of two diametrically different personas of a young country — the angry young ambitious man aka Amitabh Bachchan and the amiable middle-class boy-next-door aka Amol Palekar, who not only co-existed but flourished.

It was in 1969 that the romantic star Rajesh Khanna kicked off his phenomenal superstardom. It was also the year Bachchan made his debut, with the box-office flop Saat Hindustani. And 1969 witnessed the birth of what’s now called the parallel cinema movement, with the release of Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti, Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome and Basu Chatterjee’s Sara Akash. By 1973, the Rajesh Khanna “phenomenon” was fading and Bachchan’s angry young man was beginning to capture the imagination, particularly of the country’s youth. In the same year, Shyam Benegal’s Ankur, Nishant and Manthan became sleeper hits of the ‘new wave’ cinema. Between these two ends of the spectrum, middle-of-the-road cinema landed with Basu Chatterjee’s surprise hit, Rajnigandha (1974). The term middle-of-the-road means that such films took popular elements like songs, comedy and melodrama from commercial cinema and placed them in tales of ordinary, middle-class people. Yes, like Vicky Donor, Mimi or the recent hit Zara Hatke Zara Bachke.

When Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘angry young man’ was ruling the Hindi film industry, Basu Chatterjee’s trilogy Rajnigandha (1974), Chhoti Si Baat (1975) and Chitchor (1976), released during the Emergency, were hugely successful without a saleable “star” or big budget shenanigans. In these films, the average middle-class protagonist’s coming-of-age triumphed in the end — a celebration of small victories in life — the coveted promotion, the girl next door, the new two wheeler or finally a happy joint family home. Rajnigandha and Chitchor dealt with the dilemmas of a young woman in love. Piya Ka Ghar (1972) had a young couple living in a cramped Mumbai chawl, craving privacy. Baton Baton Mein (1979) had Christian families at its centre, while Khatta Meetha (1978) had middle-class Parsis. Their conflicts were suburban and dramatic; their resolutions simplistic, with a dash of humour.