Luck By Chance – A Tautology
Francis Voltaire has this famous quote to his credit: Chance is a word devoid of sense, nothing can exist without a cause.
I too believe in it, quite strongly. In fact, the tautology has driven me to write this post. The title of the movie is a tautology and so is the content. Zoya Akhtar has used the word Luck as well as By Chance, both meaning almost the same. Zoya, trying really hard to drive home the point, to re-iterate that nothing or probably no star in Bollywood exists without a chance. Chance comes not once, not twice but many a times. So many times that I started believing that its destiny and chance no more.
Vikram[Farhan Akhtar] goes to the party with his friend, by chance. His profile photo reaches Rolly[Rishi Kapoor], by chance. He gets offered the same role which Zafar[Hrithik Roshan] had refused, by chance. He meets Sona[Konkona Sharma] by chance. His aunt has a grandfather clock, by chance … come on whom are we kidding. Very early in the movie Saurabh Shukla tells being at the right place, at the right time … that’s the definition of luck.
We can’t leave things to chance, this itself is very well depicted in the movie. The fact that Vikram passes out of an acting institute, the manner in which he manipulates Neena ji [Dimple Kapadia], the way he handles Niki[Ishita Sharvani], the way he makes his competitor Kunal overconfident just before the all-important meeting and re-audition etc.
Despite all these glitches I loved the movie. It was honestly made, albeit a little underplayed. It had all those subtle moments and the inside jokes of the industry functionings. Rishi and Dimple stoodout in the movie, apart from Farhan and Konkona who have done a tremendous job. The dialogs by Javed Akhar were funny and scathing, at times. All the performances were brilliant, including the very special appearance of Aamir Khan in the beginning, Karan Johar somewhere in-between[not talking about his sexuality], and SRK towards the end. Inspite of all this, the movie did not do well at the BO, in fact it has been declared a flop.
I watched this movie as a person who understands cinema well and also as a layman who only wants to be entertained but has no idea how the film industry works. The movie fails for the latter rather than the former.
At one point of time, I felt like I was watching a documentary about the process of film-making; about how a star walks out of a movie, then a hunt for a new face begins, then an outdoor shoot, then the controversy in yellow pages, movie becoming a big hit and the new shining star dumping his girlfriend. The entertainment value was almost nil.
The Aly Khan and Sanjay Kapoor angle is not easily understood by the movie-going audience, the star-daughter who has had it easy and knows nothing about mom’s struggle [Dimple Kapadia and Hema Malini can speak better about this, because I could straight-away relate this to Twinkle/Rinki and Esha/Ahana], Vikram dumping Sona[Vivek Oberoi dumped his gf and now we hear Freida Pinto has dumped her bf], Sanjay Kapoor taking to direction after a failed acting career, Juhi Chawla enjoying the gossip about the affair … all these things mean nothing to the audience because they can’t relate to it. I, as audience, did not get entertained. This movie looked more like a cinema-guide for the film industry people. Let me illustrate the above by another simple example, it felt like one of those family jokes that only members of a family understand and laugh at while others in the party wonder what the joke was.
Another problem was that the movie did not have a great musical score. I recall just two songs from the movie, Sapno Se Bhare Naina and Baware [only because it appeared twice]. Rest of the songs were just pedestrian stuff, worst being the romantic number shot on outdoor location.
The way beginning credits appeared was really innovative, again showing behind-the-scene people who remain the unspoken heroes of every movie. Zoya has shown real courage in bringing to light the fantastic character observation and study that she may have done over the years. It’s a great effort, but ultimately the movie is lost amidst all the hoopla. I actually wished to see the fate of Rolly, Neena ji, Niki, Vikram and Sona if the movie had flopped. That would have been really interesting, added the much needed twist and would have evoked public interest as well as sympathy. But destiny had it, the movie within movie was a hit, and the movie itself flopped … not destiny … luck, by chance.
Tags: aamir khan, Dimple Kapadia, Farhan Akhtar, Javed Akhtar, Karan Johar, Konkona, Luck By Chance, Rishi Kapoor, SRK, Zoya Akhtar
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
This film is immensely watchable for its total sincerity and innocence.Our hindi fims are guided by the destiny/chance:Manmohan Desai movie or slumdog millionaire everything there is by luck.In India, a movie should be more rated for its originality than the plot.English DVD film remakers are found in abundance in film industry.The movie is well-executed and acted, and not a cheap ripoff to any hollywood movie.In that environment of plagiarism and leg pulling, someone is giving a genuine effort to make cinema.Zoya is trying to express herself with an honest approach.Its praiseworthy.Subtle humour is the core ofthe movie understood by the movie lovers,not put-ur-mind-outside-cinema hall jantaa.One thing to notice:The credits being shown exactly in the style of Michael clayton.I did not know about opinion of all viewers but Abhimaan(amitabh,jaya) and Sath Sath (farookh,deepti naval) comes into my mind after watching the relationship of the Farhan and Konkana.Any comments on such recalling or it is just an illusion?
@yayaver:yup…agree totally. i have mentioned abt the honest portrayal. but tat honesty actually is the weakness of the movie, its a lot too honest and underplayed. i was trying to analyse it from audience point of view. as a cinephile, i loved the movie and have mentioned tat as well.
the movie actually reminded me of devD. its vikram’s arrogance tat he sees nobody but himself, its his late realisation abt the need for anchor like sona. and if u take sona as paro, u will see tat she has shown immense maturity by moving on in life. now devD aka vikram will look out for a chanda to enter his life. in fact, chanda aka niki had entered his life but he just used her. so, whereever u see arrogance and a relationship getting spoilt bcos of it … u will be reminded of ab-jaya in abhiman
“Zoya Akhtar has used the word Luck as well as By Chance, both meaning almost the same.”, tu kaun hai boss? havent you any sense of irony? everything about the film was ironic, and the film very clearly shows how only our choices define the direction of our lives and not chance or destiny or other stories we create to comfort ourselves, in fact this dependance on the word chance is shown as a personal neurosis for most characters in the film, the title being tautological only parodies what ‘bollywood’ stands for, dimaag ka istemaal karo yaar..thoda sa hi sahi.
Bang on target analysis…
I too loved the movie a lot, esp the first half and I recommended it to one and all. But surprisingly none of my accquaintainces seemed to have liked the movie in the manner I did. All had the same complains “The first half has no story. Second half is okay with something happening”. Watching a cinema is always like watching an epic story for most of the indian audiences.
I kinda feel sad for LBC.
@Madhur: “dimaag ka istemaal karo yaar..thoda sa hi sahi” … rite … tats all u gathered from the entire post
i m sure u can do better…do read the post again. tats exactly wat i have pointed at…make a choice and not leave everything to chance. anyways…
“Rest of the songs were just pedestrian stuff”
u are being too critical i guess….did u listen to the opening credits song? “yeh zindagi bhi humein kahaan leke aa jaati hai…”
“jo palkon ke talle hai apne,
sapne leke chale hai,
woh chale sambhal ke…”
superb lyrics…and the track-in kinda romantisizing works becasue of the pace of that song -
its way too good. and just because a song appears twice thats why you will recollect it? also the song “o rahi re..” by shankar mahadevan rings in an emotional note…
i think the music is good if not excellent – SEL stuff.
it just suits the story perfectly.
@hardik mehta:the lyrics were really good, befitting the movie and the situation. but somehow, the tunes were lack-lustre. SEL always give gr8 music, tats why i was expecting something more soulful from them. just compare it with DCH, TZP etc and u will see tat the music is not upto the par.
“music is not upto the par” … i meant, not upto the mark
@crazyrals : I guess, a film’s music has a lot to do with the way it has been used. The romantic song that u have mentioned in LBC comes at a point where the film is really crawling. Thats why it seems like pain. Otherwise, its a fantastic composition. I remember, i was not at all super-excited abt DCH’s music when it got released. Its the way FA used it in the film…thts make a lot of difference. There are too many examples.
Agree with ur other points completely. The film lacks cinematic moments but a great watch for cinephiles like us. Nice article!!!
Boss, you are 100% right. I loved the film, but did think the title was rather weak…!
You are right.For a film like this one to succeed,the music had to be good.In fact if we check Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s track record with Farhan it is has been fairly consistent.Even in Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd which was produced by Excel but not directed by Farhan the music was good.Also though it is an insight into the film industry the film was subtle and had less “surprise me,shock me” elements(thankfully) which are always there in a Madhur Bhandarkar film.