From Saiyaara to Ghajini: Bollywood’s troubled tryst with mental illness
Mohit Suri’s recent film Saiyaara has turned the tables for Bollywood mainstream cinema by turning out to become a major box office success. This, though it features two newcomers in the romantic lead in this much-touted-as-a-young-romance story alternating with the leading lady turning out to be a victim of early Alzheimers’ – the incurable name for the medical trauma of forgetting – things, names, time, identities, relatives, places, people, friends, lovers, including oneself. Many reported that the film is about a young pair of deeply in love couple where the girl is diagnosed as an early Alzheimers’ patient.
The film is quite attractive for youngsters in the audience but if one closes in on the medical representation of Alzheimers’ it simply does not work. The logical lapses work towards the collapse of the film’s focus on early Alzheimers. The performances are classic but director Mohit Suri failed to decide on whether to make Saiyaara a film on young romance, or, on music, rap and poetry used as the major medium to narrate the love story or, whether to focus on a young girl suddenly discovering that she is losing her memory. But the film turned out to be a thumping hit so what are we complaining about? The complaint is about the misrepresentation of the medical symptoms and treatment of the disease despite knowing that it has no cure at all.
This drew this critic to look back on the representation of mental illness in Indian cinema. Mental ailments do not seem to be a hot favourite among producers, directors, actors, writers and even the audience. Why? Is it because mental sickness is introduced just as a masala to add to the spicy dish called mainstream cinema? Or, are the makers truly serious about using cinema as a medium to spread social awareness among the audience that knows little about mental illness which does not quite spell ‘entertainment’ for the audience? Or, are these makers trying to weave out a special genre dealing with mental sickness? Let us take a closer look.
Another film that dealt with a premature case of early Alzheimers’ is U, Me Aur Tum (2008) which marked the directorial debut of Ajay Devgn as director. But Devgn seems to have lost his way within a myriad of sub-texts to make the film attractive to the mass audience which fails. This film is said to be a hijacked plot of Nick Cassavetes' mushy-but-inspiring romance The Notebook.
Bollywood films dealing with mental illness are generously sprinkled with ignorance about mental illness, abuse of mental illness and even, failure to recognize mental illness when it happens in any character in a given film and suggest an absurd, almost comic solution to the problem to bring the story to its anticipated happy ending. Very few films suggest medical strategies to resolve the mental issue. They use mental illness as (a) a dramatic device, (b) highly emotional melodrama, (c) an additional commercial strategy to add to the entertainment value of the film.
The Alzheimer-afflicted Debraj Sahai (Amitabh Bachchan won the National Award for his performance) in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black evoked the wrath of medical specialists for its misrepresentation of Alzheimers which, they insist is incurable.
This incurable, degenerative, and terminal disease was first described by German psychiatrist and neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer in 1906 and was named after him. The film drew inspiration from Helen Keller's life and struggle. Black was a commercial success, becoming the second highest grossing Indian film worldwide in 2005 and the highest-grossing Indian film overseas.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death. But in the film, the climax hinted that Debraj Sahai who drifted steadily and surely to a severe case of Alzheimers, was on the verge of regaining his power of speech that he had lost. This is medically impossible.
The same would apply to Amir Khan’s representation of Anterograde Amnesia in Ghajini. Ghajini is not a patch on what one expected it to be – a psychological thriller inspired/ motivated by the radically different Memento directed by Christopher Nolan based on his brother Jonathan’s short story. In simpler terms, Anterograde Amnesia stands for loss of memory of what happens after the event that caused the amnesia. It is different from 'Retrograde amnesia' where memories prior to the event are forgotten. Till date, anterograde amnesia remains a mysterious ailment a cure for which is yet to be found. In Ghajini, Sanjay Singhania does not remember anything that happened more than 15 minutes back.
Sanjay Singhania’s managers leave him alone in the hospital knowing that he is always in danger from himself. He does not refer to the reverse tattoos to jog his memory through his reflection in the mirror. Nor does he take the help of his detailed diaries while others find easy access to them. The 15-minute memory span fluctuates at the convenience of the script. And no one, including himself, ever thinks of going in for psychiatric counseling if not for a cure, at least for the safety and security for himself. Why? One does not expect this amateurish treatment of a serious mental ailment from a perfectionist like Aamir Khan who dealt so well with Dyslexia in Taare Zameen Par that is not a mental illness but a genetic learning disorder.
Jahnu Barua’s Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara (2005) presents Gandhi whose memory haunts a retired professor suffering from a childhood trauma he cannot recall. The professor, enacted by Anupam Kher, is suffering from dementia, is taken very good care of by his daughter. One did not expect an excellent filmmaker like Barua to create and construct a dramatized scene of a fake court case to cure the professor from the guilt of “having killed Gandhi as a child” which is an illusion. How this sense of deep guilt is linked to his dementia is not explained in the film. The film attempts to raise questions on the responsibility of an individual as citizen both for Gandhi’s murder and for the people’s subsequent failure to disseminate his ideas and his legacy to contemporary Indians. But the link to the protagonist’s dementia confused the story and the message.