It’s almost obvious that a docuseries about Yash Raj Films and its legacy would release on Valentine’s Day since their films have become almost synonymous with the idea of ‘love’ and ‘romance’.
The Romantics is an ode to YRF but more than that, it is a love letter to Indian cinema. Smriti Mundhra’s series puts a spotlight on how Yash Chopra and Aditya Chopra came to make the films that they did which became irreplaceable parts of Indian cinema’s legacy in itself.
Just a primitive list like Waqt, Trishul, Kaala Patthar, Silsila, Noorie, Chandni, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Mohabbatein, and Bunty Aur Babli shows immense versatility.
Mundhra makes the smart decision to juxtapose the conversations about these films with the reality in India in that period - so we see how Yash Chopra made films about political instability and religious identity during the 1970s and why Aditya Chopra’s Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi worked as escapist cinema so close to 26/11.
The art of cinema has been talked about for decades but The Romantics relies on that heavy dose of nostalgia with a dollop of star power to tell its story. The audience is taken to view all the aspects of cinema, from why the chiffon sarees were Yash Chopra’s choice of fabric to how Aditya Chopra tried to step out of his father’s shadow.
Faces like Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Kajol, Rani Mukherji, and Ranveer Singh (among so many others), all reminisce upon their time as YRF stars, revealing secrets and relishing in anecdotes. There is a certain showiness to it in bits but it's easy to overlook.
The ever-elusive Aditya Chopra, too, makes an appearance in The Romantics and so does Lilly Singh as perhaps the diaspora voice in the show. So do film critics and journalists and financers - all necessary pillars of the film industry.
The Romantics, at its best, is a holistic telling of how intuition and the audience, at the end of the day, make or break cinema.
Despite the larger than life depiction of the Chopra family, the docuseries doesn’t shy away from discussion pitfalls and failures - times when the effervescent Yash Chopra charm or the Aditya Chopra clairvoyance (if you will) didn’t translate to box office success.
If you’ve grown up surrounded by cinema, and it is near impossible not to be when you live in India - cinema permeates almost every nook and gully of this country - it’s tough to not tap your feet to the unforgettable music (my favourites were the tracks from Chandi and Hum Aapke Hain Koun!). And of course, the archival footage doesn't hurt.
Several filmmakers like Yash and Aditya Chopra, Shyam Benegal, Satyajit Ray, Raj Kapoor, Mira Nair, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, and Sooraj Barjatya, have pioneered changes in Indian cinema.
If the series (and my mother, let’s be honest) are to be believed, YRF perhaps had the same effect on Bollywood as Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai’s Bombay Talkies did in the early 1940s. In a country where cinema has ranged from a medium of dissent to escapism to a true expression of 'Indian-ness', stories like the ones The Romantics tell are novel in a way.
And it handles the weight of this novelty well, across the four episodes.
The Romantics is streaming on Netflix.
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