The Romantics Reiterates the Promise Bollywood Made to India Many Years Ago

The Romantics is a multi-starrer Bollywood love triangle featuring Yash Chopra, the filmmaker who taught India how to romance, his son Aditya Chopra who made India’s most loved film, and India. They are the three points of this buzzy triangle inside which sit some of Bollywood’s top actors, actresses, writers, directors and distributors. And like it is in most YRF films, iss kahani mein drama hai, action bhi, emotions hain, gaane hain, aur tragedy bhi.

The first half of this four-part series by Smriti Mundhra swirls around a conventional, Punjabi man and master director who tried to keep Bollywood’s promise to help build a newly independent India through his films, and the second half is about a son who carries forward and builds on his father’s legacy by creating a world-class studio that launched new actors, actresses, directors, writers and created India’s foremost film brand – Yash Raj Films. 

The Romantics is interesting and engaging because it is as much about two filmmakers, their family, studio and the films they created together as it is about the story of India – its love affair with itself that began with euphoria but soured, its wailing at shattered dreams and then rising again with new aspirations.  
The series begins with the Man from Jalandhar, Yash Chopra, chhota bhai and assistant director of B.R. Chopra. Through archival footage, his old interviews, film clips, songs and comments by his near and dear ones, we are drawn into his jhappi-maro world and reintroduced to his films – beginning with his directorial debut, Dhool Ka Phool (a 1959 film about a Muslim man bringing up a Hindu kid) and ending with his last film, Jab Tak Hai Jaan (a 2012 film about a tragic love story starring Shah Rukh Khan).

We meet the Chopra parivaar, their friends, collaborators, celebrate big hits, see demoralizing flops, and hear anecdotes about Yash Chopra’s work ethic, his funny, quirky frugality on sets, the films he wanted to make and why, and embedded in all this are some benign film history gems.

While the series skirts the issue of the casting coup of the last century – Silsila – we are told how Sridevi was convinced to say yes to Chandni and its all-white wardrobe. 

This segment brings alive Yash Chopra and celebrates a charming old world that is now gone. 

In the present, the series is grounded by the shy, reclusive Aditya Chopra. He gives an extensive interview that begins with him addressing the charge of nepotism in a very honest, candid, personal way.

We meet a young Aditya Chopra who used to make copious notes about the films he watched, and give his verdict – hit or flop – and then see him as a serious, focused, grown man making his directorial debut with Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge which, in many ways, was the foundation stone for YRF Studios.

Aditya Chopra comes across as a confident, sharp, creative, talented director and studio head, but also a caring, loving son to his father, and a sensitive filmmaker and producer who tries to gauge the mood of the nation before making or backing a film.

Two years before Dr Manmohan Singh gave flight to India’s aspiration with liberalization, Aditya Chopra opened up Bollywood to the massive Indian diaspora with DDLJ. And it’s with this gut instinct that he went on to produce Chak De, Band Baja Baraat, Dum Laga Ke Haisha and two very successful franchises – Dhoom and Tiger.

Aditya Chopra is the star of the show because in the stories he tells – about his privileged upbringing, his father gifting him a studio, directing a blockbuster, the many flops of 2007 (Jhoom Barabar Jhoom and Tashan, among others), and promoting new voices and launching young actors – he cradles both, memories of the past and future possibilities.

In the transition from Yash to Aditya Chopra, The Romantics tells the story of India, Indians, their changing mood, aspirations, and desires. How it went from loving Lala Kedarnath of Waqt (played by Balraj Sahni) to identifying with Deewaar’s Angry Young Vijay, from imitating Chandni (Sridevi) and Raj Malhotra (Shah Rukh Khan) to wanting to do chatur, chalu stuff with Bunty aur Babli (Abhishek Bachchan and Rani Mukerji). And how romance changed – from Silsila’s extra-marital affair to Rab Ne Bana Di Jori, where a man desperately tries to infuse some romance into his arranged marriage.

The Romantics is produced by Yash Raj Films, so naturally it is dedicated to making sure that the Chopras put their best foot forward. But it does this cleverly.

While the series makes Aditya Chopra directly tackle the nepotism debate, it also addresses the prickly issue in a more oblique but effective way by first creating a narrative about how Bollywood, especially the Chopras, are the guardians of India’s uniquely desi cinema.

They – the Chopras and those associated with them – are presented as the keepers of Indian stories who stood their ground against big American studios, saving Bollywood, and our stories, from a foreign takeover. And then it makes us meet Uday Chopra who talks about how keen he was to become a star, but could not make it though the country’s biggest studio, that he partly owned, was backing him.

Despite his heavy makeup and accent, Uday Chopra comes across as a boy still dealing with that failure and is quite disarming. 

Woh kisi ne kaha hai na, don’t tell them, show them. That’s what the show does to interrupt the one-dimensional narrative that has been built around nepotism in Bollywood.

Admittedly, the series just scratches the surface to say its piece on controversial topics. And some stars, like Salman Khan, are conspicuous by their absence. But by reintroducing us to the Chopras and the larger YRF khandaan in a dignified, graceful way, the series creates intimacy with them and humanizes the directors, producers, writers and actors who have been vilified.

The Romantics’ format is standard. There are a lot of speaking heads, and several of them have a massive, dramatic art canvas hovering in the backdrop. Once is nice, but when it becomes a format, it’s boring.

Most of the interviews are sweet and feel spontaneous, but there are places where it’s very obvious that the script had a particular line or a point to make, and someone was found to say exactly that. This kachcha-pakka quality in a few places betrays the effect the series is otherwise aiming for and achieves – free-wheeling sincerity. 

But these are minor glitches in a series that tells a heartwarming story which, like all good YRF films, made me laugh, cry, and fall in love once again with Bollywood. Many things stuck with me, including writer Jaideep Sahni who narrates how Chak De! was born and green-lit. He is moved to tears while telling it, and I was moved to tears listening to it.

I really liked The Romantics because I sensed a confident attempt by Bollywood to reassert itself, its significance, the role it plays in our lives, and to outline its plans to keep the promise it once made to India.

Indian cinema, especially Bollywood, is our dream machine. Duniya may call it escape cinema, but hamare liye it’s life-affirming sustenance. I have always believed and continue to believe that mainstream Bollywood is India’s barometer. By looking at Bollywood, you can tell what’s happening in India. 

And now I am sensing a change. While watching The Romantics, I feel a gentle breeze of badlav. It’s just begun, first with Pathaan and now this. But if Bollywood is beginning to change, I promise you, India won’t be far behind.