Frustrated with spineless media, corporate takeover and journalists on payroll, angered citizens hit the streets to oppose a resolution passed by the local council that can destroy carefully nurtured shared history. It could be the India of today, but it’s also the past of a fictional town of Zoya Akhtar’s latest musical The Archies— the new Netflix feature that offers Christmas candies wrapped in a pamphlet of young rebellion.
The publicity campaign of The Archies was fueled with intense—at least back when it was announced—criticism of casting three privileged star kids out of the seven young debutants. It marks the acting debut of Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter Suhana, megastar Amitabh Bachchan’s grandson Agastya and actor Sridevi and film producer Boney Kapoor’s daughter Khushi. The narrative aligned with the years of unfair labeling of Akhtar as a maker interested only in chronicling stories of the rich. Having star kids in the ensemble only added a dash of a smug of course.
But Akhtar isn’t as much interested in giving it back to what people critique her for, as she is in calling out the system, which is always threatened by voices like her. The glasses could be strawberry milkshake-tinted, but the gaze remains unfiltered. Who said revolution can’t start in a cafe?
Watching The Archies, then, is a retro pop blast of an era gone by and the world—India— we live in today. It talks about the history, but the voice is present, it hints at the impending nightmare, but the tone is dreamy.
Akhtar is a master storyteller, who dashes out of the ‘She just makes it for the privileged‘ pigeonhole with a film that’s deeply personal and consistently political. Sample this: There’s a wholly wonderful track about why one can’t be apolitical, how minorities in the country feel this is their home from the heart, there’s also a mention of governance and democracy, there’s corruption and coercion, there’s an evil corporate slowly taking control of everything, there are trees being cut in the garb of development. Are you understanding the chronology?
The Archies’ politics works because even in the fictional town of Riverdale, there’s the reality of India. The film might be wearing velvet gloves, but the punch leaves a bruise. And as the film gears up towards its rousing climax with a bunch of teenagers leading a revolution, it doesn’t hold back.
It is quite a Rang De Basanti moment as the awakened kids take it upon themselves to shake the town that feels helpless. The innocent teenagers transform in a manner the free-spirited youth in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s 2006 film does. In a lot of ways, the Archies kids are the Anglo-Indian milkshake-sipping revolutionary ancestors of Rang De Basanti’s Delhi-based alu paratha-eating mundas. They are friends, they party, they fall apart, they come together, they fight– they save their idea of India.
“To make art you don’t have to go out,” says Archie’s father to him. “You’ve to go in,” he adds, reminiscence of R Madhavan’s passionate appeal to Aamir Khan and gang, that to bring a change in the system you’ve to be in it, and not be a bystander critic. Much like Rang De Basanti’s powerful radio-station set climax, The Archies kids also relay an important message to the community. How? Using a makeshift… radio.
With The Archies, Zoya Akhtar has made a truly global film that’s interested in not just showing what the world is but what it could be. Akhtar isn’t asking you what will you do if life gives you lemons. She’s asking you to accept: It’s the politics that got it in your hand in the first place.
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First published on: 09-12-2023 at 07:59 IST
