From SOTY To ‘Dear Zindagi’: What Makes Alia Bhatt A Terrific Star

Alia Bhatt surprised us with ‘Udta Punjab’ and ‘Highway’, but she has us stumped with ‘Dear Zindagi’.

Alia Bhatt in a scene from Dear Zindagi. (Photo courtesy: Red Chillies Entertainment)

When Karan Johar revealed full page ads for his teen romance Student of the Year, it appeared to be yet another film launching industry kids. For Alia Bhatt, bagging the role of the leading lady in a big-budget love triangle seemed like a cake walk, for ours is an industry deeply entrenched in bloodlines and nepotism.

The film released. Bhatt seemed like another version of the little Bo Peep, and Bollywood lapped it up. Like TV clings to the ‘bubbly, vivacious and of course, righteous’ leading lady, cinema sticks to its manic pixie dream of a girl, the only kind that our boys prefer. They look at her as if she’s an exotic animal on the loose, one he must rescue for his very own happily ever after.

Fortunately, Miss Bhatt didn’t turn out to be a damp squib unlike several other star kids, and her light-hearted, natural presence on screen worked wondrously in her favour. In an industry where female actors ageing is a big no-no, Alia’s young persona makes her a potential long distance runner, and that’s a big advantage. But her biggest USP is also her Achilles heel.

Unlike many of her contemporaries, Alia seems to be stuck in the sovereign land of teendom, never graduating even for a moment into womanhood. Which is why, watching her being sexualised despite her amiable smile, by way of songs, costumes, and mannerisms, makes one feel like Humbert Humbert. How age will treat her, only time will tell.

It was only when Imtiaz Ali abducted her for a road trip through the badlands of India that we, the skeptics (possibly only yours truly) witnessed her flight to nonconformity. Highway worked almost like the parable of an actor who wanted to break free, asserting her identity to the cynical observers as ‘Look, I have talent, so what if I was born into nepotism… I can only survive if I have mettle’. Stripped of her designer wardrobe, she brought up a seething story of child abuse to life with dirt, grime and ample tears. Veera was an eye-opener, though not without faults. Though earnest, the performance revealed an inconsistency, and the fact that the young girl had miles to go before she built her character brick by brick, without a gaping hole.

She also continued her Bollywood charade, serenading her young fans with what they wanted out of her, playing the girl next door in a bunch of happy films. This year, she threw another googly with Udta Punjab, playing an unnamed migrant labourer in the drug infested northern state. The film also featured Kareena Kapoor, the actor she vocally admires, but here the fan outshone her favourite star. Alia went a few steps ahead of her Highway role, and embraced a poor girl, forced into drug and sexual slavery, with a cloak of empathy. Though she failed to keep her accent uniform throughout the film, her drug-addled despair equaled the anguish of the actor in her, hungry for roles that can give her a sky to fly free.

Finally, Dear Zindagi came along this week. With Kaira, little Miss Bhatt has finally revealed her trump card, that she is truly ready for stardom. As a film, Gauri Shinde’s modest drama is like that entrant in a bookstore who looks at the ‘literary fiction’ shelf with distrust, assuming great writers who can withstand time are nothing but heavy-handed, and settles for ‘self-help’ or ‘bestseller’ wisdom, for he or she is looking for ready-made chicken soup for the soul. The film is noteworthy for it wants to address mental health as an issue, casting popular actors, and even refuses to cower down to customary demands of including dramatic secrets in the past. A mother-daughter story from everyday Indian life, where there is no villain, but circumstances, that make everyone commit follies, and how a little episode in the past can hold one a prisoner for life, ultimately manifesting in ugly ways. But the film deals with the issues with a Paulo Coelho sagaciousness, and cornball lines are delivered one after another.

Despite the film’s PSA air, and picture perfect glow (she doesn’t have dark circles despite sleeplessness), it flows only because the leading lady elevates the uninspired material with compassion and vulnerability. Despite toplining a Khan, the film serves a long prelude to show a girl, running away from love while craving for it to rescue her. She doesn’t have a healthy relationship with her parents either. The way Bhatt mirrors the confusion of her character, constantly shifting from concrete to muddle, is the sign of an actor who refuses to acknowledge anything before her camera. In the club scene with Kunal Kapoor’s Raghuvendra, Kaira travels from romantic glee to utter despondency, in the span of a few seconds, without dramatic gambits.

It is a thing of beauty. No expository dialogues, just so many girls we come across, keeping up a brave front, trying to be indifferent so that the acute ache inside doesn't show up. We are prepared for a show of effortlessness.

When Shah Rukh Khan’s delightful therapist, Dr Jehangir Khan shows up on screen, it's easy to expect that the star will take over the show from here on. After all, he has charmed millions for two and a half decades, and when he is in his elements, the audience can’t help but eat out of his palms. But Miss Bhatt blooms despite our apprehensions.

When she is peeling herself off before Khan, not once does she forget that she is the center of this narrative cosmos. She has a good-humoured co-existence with Khan, allows him to be charismatic, but while still holding your attention with a quiet persuasiveness. And that’s a beautiful proclamation of her potential as a screen grabber.

Alia Bhatt has always been good with breaking down scenes, fluently reducing herself to a pile of tears like a seasoned actor. We have seen that in Highway, Udta Punjab, in that little scene in Kapoor & Sons, and now in Dear Zindagi. But what makes Dear Zindagi her most accomplished turn is her alacrity to show the little gestures that signal her character’s ascent and descent. The twitch of her lips, her fiddling with props, and her eyes masking a universe of pain hidden somewhere in the past, in an episode of callous uncaring. Kaira is a majestic composition of averageness, her lines are delivered with the unplanned air of improvisation, as if she is doing it for the first time and as she is going along, for fear of rehearsals sedating her rendition. Kaira is alive not because there are words at her disposal, but because she is submerged in her surroundings, generating emotions so well, you could almost overhear her thoughts. Intensity is easier to perform, it’s restraint that’s a difficult beast. Alia makes Kaira flower in the Gustave Flaubert brand of realism, with a kind of emotional shape-shifting that favours the difficult internal over the easy external.

Dear Zindagi is a great proof of Alia Bhatt’s possibilities as an actor. She is young, she is restless, and she is ready to empty herself before the audience. She has understood the grand prospects of intimate waves. When an actor holds your attention through and through and rises above the average material given to her, she is a definite star. A round of applause, please.

(The writer is a journalist and a screenwriter who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise. Follow him on Twitter: @RanjibMazumder)