Aarcflick

“Romance films used to be Bollywood’s bread and butter, but it has failed to create good romances lately” is an opinion almost everyone shares these days. And while there’s a lot of truth to that statement, I think it misses a key point: real-life romance is pretty much dead. Until the 1990s, and perhaps even the early 2000s, the idea of love presented by the Hindi film industry and what people imagined their lives would be like after falling in love were somewhat in sync. But as reality set in and social media came into the picture to distort an already skewed perception of relationships, Bollywood couldn’t keep pace.  It couldn’t figure out how to address the ever-increasing sexism, unrealistic expectations, and the unhealthy dose of “traditionalism” that had permeated something as tender as love, while simultaneously trying to teach people how to “fix” things. Thus, the genre began to feel gimmicky, hollow, and just plain bad. There were some good ones here and there, but not en...