Zero is a wild film that imagines a classless India in which a small town dwarf gets with a rocket scientist and a movie star, rejects them both, goes to Mars, and returns. Starring Shah Rukh Khan, the movie includes a monkey, two cancelled weddings, and irrefutable proof that Abhay Deol and R Madhavan are palatable only in small doses. Of course everybody hated it.
If the unexpected discourse around The Archies has shown one thing, it’s this: Indian audiences, barring that one time, don’t seem to have an appetite for earnestness any more; they’re far more interested in ‘edgy’ cinema. Perhaps this is a reaction to the endless hours of crime ‘content’ that we consumed during the pandemic? Or perhaps it’s just a natural response to the collective frustration that this country is feeling. In many ways, Zero’s failure foreshadowed the response that Zoya Akhtar’s Archies was greeted to recently.
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Both films exist in a heightened reality populated by characters that wear their hearts on their sleeve. They are fuelled not by jealousy, vengeance or hatred, but by a desire to do good, to evolve, and to atone. It’s no coincidence that Zero, by far the most ambitious film of Shah Rukh Khan’s career, shares several similarities with his other big bomb, Swades. Unlike Ashutosh Gowariker’s epic, however, Aanand L Rai’s sweeping love story hasn’t quite developed a cult following even five years after its disastrous debut.
The film’s failure pushed SRK to essentially go underground for half a decade, only for him to return in an entirely different form, one that he recognised audiences were probably going to be more forgiving of. Nobody wanted to watch him play Bauua Singh, a wise-cracking dwarf, but they hungrily lapped up the chiseled superheroes that he played in both his rebound vehicles, Pathaan and Jawan.
Zero feels almost archaic, but not in a bad way. It’s a reminder of more innocent times, when films weren’t contractually obligated to have ‘entry shots’ and ‘elevation scenes’ and all that other nonsense; when Bollywood tradition dictated that films should have title cards in English, Hindi, and also Urdu. The first half of the movie, however, is something that even the detractors surprisingly agreed on. If Pathaan and Jawan weaponised SRK’s goodwill, the first hour of Zero, during which Bauua successfully woos a rocket scientist named Aafia Yusufzai Bhinder (Anushka Sharma), unleashed a pure charm-offensive.
Ajay-Atul’s “Mere Naam Tu” remains the most magical musical sequence that the King of Romance has ever been a part of — a visually stunning and deeply heartfelt conclusion to an expertly crafted first act; a cinematic encapsulation of everything that makes SRK the most beloved movie star of his generation. “Mere Naam Tu” takes the whimsy of “Tumse Milke” from Main Hoon Na — a movie that never stopped winking at the audience — and transports it to a universe where the concept of cynicism doesn’t exist. Observe how the orchestra swoons and colours erupt around Aafia the moment she realises that Bauua — apologies to Babil Khan — has ‘got’ her.
The first half is also when Zero has the freedom to flat-out flex as a comedy, with the criminally under-appreciated Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, who plays Bauua’s visually impaired best friend and personal hype-man Guddu, and Tigmanshu Dhulia, who plays his long-suffering father, taking the lead. “Kya marinate hue baithe ho,” Guddu says impatiently, by way of greeting, at Bauua’s haldi ceremony. “Halak se niwala kaise utar raha hai aapke,” he asks Bauua’s parents, as they casually eat dinner while Bauua threatens to kill himself in the bathroom. “Meetha allowed hai aapko?” his father innocently asks Aafia when she shows up at their home to propose marriage. The last one is actually a throwaway joke that most people might not even clock. Is there a bigger sign of confidence than a comedy not feeling the need to underline every joke?
The narrative whiplash that everybody experienced in the far more melodramatic second half wasn’t really because of the drastic tonal shift, but because of what they’d just seen Bauua do. Zero hits the interval mark on a rather daring emotional beat, with Bauua — unambiguously the protagonist of the movie — dumping Aafia at the altar and running after the troubled film star Babita Kumari (Katrina Kaif). Unlike, say, Bawaal, which transformed its loutish protagonist through the course of the narrative into a less repulsive fellow than he used to be — the impulse to do this is fine, but the way the movie chose to turn him around was the problem — Zero essentially shows Bauua to be absolutely irredeemable at the hour mark, and then, possessed by the spirit of romantic heroes of yore, challenges itself to win the audience back. It clearly wasn’t able to.
Rai’s attempts to do so are mirrored by Bauua’s own efforts to win Aafia back; the audience, as it were is Aafia. And this is when the movie takes its wildest creative swings. Combined with the still-seamless visual effects — there’s a reason why this is SRK’s most expensive movie — Zero takes the ‘I love you to the moon and back’ sentiment that people casually throw around and pushes it to the absolute limit. It’s a fairytale, a superhero story, a tip of the hat to old-fashioned Bollywood make-belief.
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Watching SRK retreat after the film’s disappointing run and hole up inside the four walls of Mannat reminded me of the final scene in The Artist — perhaps the least-memorable Best Picture winner of the last two decades. The sequence was filmed in an unbroken shot that left no room for trickery, laziness, or deceit. It showed the film’s protagonist, a silent era movie star, performing the most exquisite dance of his life, and then, after he was done, breathlessly begging for the audience’s approval. He didn’t get it, and despite leaving everything on the floor, neither did SRK.
Post Credits Scene is a column in which we dissect new releases every week, with particular focus on context, craft, and characters. Because there’s always something to fixate about once the dust has settled.
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Rohan NaaharRohan Naahar is an assistant editor at Indian Express online. He cover… read more
Zero: The most ambitious film of Shah Rukh Khan’s career is ready for a reappraisal; can everybody admit it was treated unfairly? – The Indian Express
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