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........

© Mathrubhumi English