Interesting article from Film Companion with screen grabs from both the films!
An all-boys trip is at the centre of the Zoya Akhtar blockbuster and the Satyajit Ray classic. But they have more resemblances than what meets the eye
Four friends, Ashim (Soumitra Chatterjee), Sanjoy (Shubhendu Chatterjee), Shekhar (Robi Ghosh) and Hari (Shamit Bhanja) are in an ambassador, on their way to the forests of Palamou. Ashim is driving, Sanjay is reading out passages from a travelogue about the place, then in Bihar, now in Jharkhand. Shekhar also has a book. They are chatting among themselves. Hari is sleeping. Shekhar decides to screw with him. When they stop at a petrol pump, he wakes him up by saying that their car has broken down; they need to step out and push it. Hari is annoyed when he discovers that it’s another of Shekhar’s pranks; he charges at him, holding him by the collars.
It’s the first time we see Shekhar pull a prank on Hari, but it’ll hardly be the last. A couple of scenes later, after they leave the petrol pump, he takes another jibe at Hari. In response, Hari throws Shekhar’s book out of the car window. And so begins Satyajit Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest), which completed 50 years last year.
Now cut to this scene in Zoya Akhtar’s Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2012). Arjun (Hrithik Roshan), Imran (Farhan Akhtar) and Kabir (Abhay Deol) set off together in a rented SUV on their long-planned road trip, in Spain. They stop at a gas station. In the washroom, they play one of their old boy pranks on an unsuspecting local, freaking him out by pretending that there is something like a monster behind him. After refilling the car they drive toward their destination and Arjun gets a call. It’s a work call—not for the first in the trip, but definitely the last. ‘Why don’t someone throw away his phone?,’ says Kabir, in half-jest. Imran obliges.
A group of friends. In a car. The beginning of a trip. A gas station. A prank. And as a result, an object belonging to one of them being thrown out from a running car. Men acting like boys. The startling similarities in these two scenes from Aranyer Din Ratri and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara don’t end with the fact that Arjun and Imran, like Shekhar and Hari, almost come to blows.
Full article below:
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