Luck, Chance, and Cinema
Released 15 years ago, Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance (2009) was a stinging critique of the shabbiness and the showmanship of the Hindi film industry, where one of the industry’s own looked within and held out a mirror for all to see.
Fifteen years ago, the oversaturated genre of ‘movies about the movies’ welcomed a sparkling new entry. Zoya Akhtar’s debut, Luck By Chance (2009) is a story of two outsiders thirsting for acceptance and stardom in Mumbai, the city of dreams.
Luck By Chance (LBC) arrived at a transformational time for the Indian film industry. In the late 2000s, Akhtar’s first cousin Farah Khan was basking in the successful afterglow of her sophomore directorial effort, Om Shanti Om. A dramatic, overblown tale of love, loss, and reincarnation, Khan’s film also featured the dizzying glitz and glamour of the big, bad world of Bollywood as its backdrop. Akhtar’s LBC was released two years later, perceiving the same world through brand new eyes, providing a fresher, sharper perspective of the world’s largest movie-making industry. Layered and nuanced, it was a stinging critique of the shabbiness and showmanship of Bollywood, where one of the industry’s own looked within and held out a mirror for all to see.
In her efforts to add to the genre, Akhtar had large shoes to fill. There had been stellar examples of movies about the movies over the years, many that ruminated with aching, philosophical meditations that brilliantly exposed the sham behind the fame, including Guru Dutt’s staggering autobiographical dirge Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), Smita Patil’s piercing, existential ballad Bhumika (1977), and Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s pragmatic, life-affirming Guddi (1971).
LBC released during a period of flux within Hindi cinema, as creators and producers experimented with new content. The industry was not fully sure of itself, or where it wanted to go. The period produced several self-reflexive films, such as Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon (2003), Page 3 (2005), and the Irrfan Khan starrer Billu (2009), a dark satire on the vertiginous extent of rural India’s obsession with movie stars. This period preceded the next decade, as the explorations got darker, stranger, with films like Madhur Bhandarkar’s Heroine (2012), Maneesh Sharma’s Fan (2016), Rajkumar Hirani’s Sanju (2018), Aanand L. Rai’s Zero (2018), Anirudh Iyer’s An Action Hero (2022), Vikramaditya Motwane’s meta-comedy AK vs AK (2020) and the glorious limited series Jubilee (2022). Some of these films/shows excavated the past, while others shuddered at the present, each exposing a festering wound that even the best makeup couldn’t conceal.
Despite the industry’s over-indulgent and often melancholic observations of its own self, the various themes explored in LBC have withstood the test of time. The film’s central characters Vikram (Farhan Akhtar) and Sona (Konkona Sensharma) represent ideologies starkly different from each other. They are both dreamers and hustlers, and yet, only Viram reaches the fabled finish line. Sona’s ‘loss’, however, isn’t without a silver lining: Even if she never makes it big in the movies, she gets to spend her days performing the art for which she has struggled for so long, for which she has sacrificed so much for. She gets to live life on her own terms, at her own pace. That, as she concludes in the film’s memorable, didactic climax, is a win too.
However, LBC isn’t just about Sona or Vikram. In their adventures in Mumbai, the protagonists encounter several other characters that populate the orbit of Indian cinema, including the starlet Nikki Walia (Isha Sharvani), her mother and a has-been star Neena Walia (Dimple Kapadia), the veteran producer Romy (Rishi Kapoor), his wife Minty (Juhi Chawla) and superstar Zaffar Khan (Hrithik Roshan). Through each of these superbly crafted characters, Akhtar taps into the insecurities, quirks, eccentricities, volatility, and vulnerability of the many people who make the industry.
The film susurrates with scenes that hits viewers like a ton of bricks, including Vikram’s chance encounter with Shah Rukh Khan, who plays his own, enigmatic self. In a 145-second masterclass, SRK congratulates Vikram on the success of his first film, gives career advice, and offers guidance to keep him grounded.
In another poignant moment, Vikram reconnects with Sona after his first film becomes a mega hit, and asks her to get together with him again. So sure he is of it happening, that Sona’s refusal feels like a thundering slap. It’s a scene that shows both the characters shine unmistakably in their true element: Vikram is selfish, self-obsessed, too preoccupied with himself and his lofty ambition to care about anyone or anything else. Sona, meanwhile, is self-assured, self-aware, and self-respecting, cutting Vikram to size each time he tries to levitate above her.
It’s easy for such pointed commentary to get vinegary or lose the plot. But LBC’s real victory is its ability to present sharp, unwavering focus, and stay buoyant despite its gloomy undertone. The film disembowels the Hindi film industry, calls it out, laughs at it, but not once does it get bitter or lose its centre. Akhtar arm twists, but with a gentle hand, like only someone who cares deeply can.
The film disembowels the Hindi film industry, calls it out, laughs at it, but not once does it get bitter or lose its centre. Akhtar arm twists, but with a gentle hand, like only someone who cares deeply can.
This gentle touch is palpable right from the film’s start. In the opening credits sequence, Akhtar shines a spotlight on all the faceless people who work tirelessly behind the scenes to conjure up the glamour on the silver screen: make-up artists, background dancers, people who construct the sets from scratch, serve tea, put hoardings, cater food at outdoor shoots, assistants, body doubles, background singers, and more. It takes a village to make a film, and Akhtar gives credit where it’s most due (and often overlooked). Those four minutes wonderfully set the tone for everything that follows.
Farhan Akhtar—the director’s brother— landed the role of Vikram after reportedly every actor of any repute turned it down. Farhan gives a remarkable, restrained performance as the scheming, manipulative, ambitious, desperate Vikram, it is difficult to fathom it was only his second acting role. As for Sensharma, it was her first meaty role after her breakthrough Hindi debut in Madhur Bhandarkar’ Page 3. She plays a film journalist in Bhandarkar’s film writing about the stars; in LBC, she hopes to be a star herself. As Sona, Sensharma sunk her teeth deep into the role, feasted greedily on the opportunity, and immortalized the character in movie history.
15 years is an epochal moment to look at how far each of the central creative forces associated with this woefully underappreciated gem of a film has come. The Akhtar siblings have since built gargantuan movie empires of their own, carving an indispensable seat for themselves at the forefront of Hindi cinema. Sensharma, meanwhile, continues to be the tour de force actor that we’ve always known her to be. She has also branched out as a director, helming celebrated films such as A Death in the Gunj (2017) and The Mirror (2023).
Even though several shows and films set in and around the Hindi film industry have released since LBC—most recently The Fame Game, Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives, and Showtime—they can best be described as disposable content spewed out by streaming giants by the dozen. In the current era of mass-manufactured, regurgitated, shockingly empty show-reels masquerading as movies, LBC sticks out as an anomaly—a rare, insightful, one-of-a-kind gift that keeps on giving.
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Sneha Bengani is a film and culture critic. She has written extensively on cinema, gender, books, and pop culture for some of India’s leading news publications, such as CNBC-TV18, Firstpost, CNN-News18, and Hindustan Times. Over the years, she has lived in various cities across the country but her home and heart are in Jaipur. You can find her on Instagram: @benganiwrites and Twitter: @benganiwrites.
