Just watched Dear Zindagi thanks to Netflix… A fine film released a few months ago starring Allia Bhatt and Shahrukh Khan in the lead roles… The film appears to have been made with the purpose of educating the public on the importance of Pyschotherapy and basically an attempt (“vinamr koshish” as Aamir Khan says regarding his TV show 🙂 ) to eradicate the stigma associated with psychological issues, which causes most people to avoid taking treatment, fearing the ever judgemental and unforgiving society and letting the issues get worse with time…
The plot of the film basically is the journey of an incredibly talented young woman Kaira who is emotionally quite messed up almost to the point of being self destructive especially with regard to her love life… The character does remind me of the character played by Aya Cash in the popular series called You’re the worst, but not as severe… Allia Bhatt has really done a good job portraying the same… The film goes on to when Kaira out of a severe insomnia problem decides to meet a therapist after listening to him speak at an event where she happened to be there for work… The therapist, ie, Dr. Jehangir “Jug” Khan is played by Shahrukh Khan and SRK as the funny and yet quirky therapist does look good and there are points where you do get confused as to who the patient is between the two of them 🙂 Then ofcourse there are a few scenes which portray the patriarchical attitude of the people which refuses to treat single women with any kind of respect and there are a few where the same attitude gets mocked and there is one scene where the girl gives a befitting reply to it all, which I think all girls should watch and assimilate into their lives…
Only complaint I have is that the cliche move of having the girl fall in love with the therapist could’ve been avoided… First of all, I don’t think it contributes anything to the storyline of this film and secondly, I am pretty sure that many people will see that as a potential danger of sending their young female family members to the much needed therapy causing the stigma to remain atleast in that sense… So, not sure why that was included in the script… Maybe they really did put it in as a warning or maybe not… Anyways, inspite of it, this is a fine film that I think everyone should watch atleast once… 🙂