Watching Netflix’s The Roshans is a strange experience. For most parts, it feels like you are gatecrashing a private party meant to heap praise on a set of people (the hosts) by their friends and family. A few of those praise-winners seem to be accepting a laurel similar to a lifetime achievement award while the others, much younger, have used the occasion to pause, reflect and squeeze in a quick pat on the back for themselves. You want to participate, even as a bystander, to genuinely share and spread the joy but the apparent self-styling and lack of candour feels a bit unsettling. You partake nevertheless, all by not disturbing the proceedings and withholding judgment for as long as possible.
The latest four-part documentary to hit the streaming giant comes as another valiant addition to the ongoing self-portrait culture on the Indian web, wherein a huge platform is lent (bought) and a bright red virtual carpet is laid out for the already-rich-and-uplifted to marinate a tad longer in their glories. The glory is all well earned, no doubt, but the encircling vibe of self-proclamation does little to the grace and humility part that makes all the difference.
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Not very long ago, Smriti Mundhra’s The Romantics made waves when the Yash Chopra clan, with the money shot Aditya Chopra included, dedicated four full episodes to recount everything it has achieved and endured in its own whimsical, sticky sweet way. The results were worthy of a critique but given the Chopras’ contribution to Hindi cinema’s vibrancy and colourful caprice, the show was largely unjudged and duly celebrated: without realising that the Bollywood giant, yet again, is setting off a trend of sorts.
Directed by Shashi Ranjan, The Roshans too allots itself four episodes that adhere to a straightforward approach: each episode will be reserved for one male achiever of the Roshan drawer. A cold open offers a summary in which all the players — ace music composer Roshan Lal Nagrath, his sons Rakesh Roshan and Rajesh Roshan, and grandson Hrithik Roshan — are introduced along with the long parade of guest speakers. The guests, the talking heads, are the who’s who of Hindi cinema ranging from Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Vicky Kaushal, Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Javed Akhtar, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Zoya Akhtar, Asha Bhosle and countless more. The hosts make their presence felt as well as the narrative crisscrosses between anecdotes and insights about personal and professional achievements, falls, rises, etc. A rousing musical score underlines each moment, with scattered recreations of certain events, too, part of the offering.
A heartfelt tribute to a maestro
To its credit, The Roshans kicks off the proceedings with its best tale, which is of the late music composer Roshan Lal Nagrath, fondly known as Roshan. Born in Punjab in pre-Independent India and far removed from the world of music and entertainment, Roshan forged a way for himself by pursuing classical music with a lot of purity in his heart. Bombay would beckon to him just as it did to every artist in search of work and recognition back in the day, and he would slowly but surely make a mark in the burgeoning Hindi Film Industry with his touch of originality. Roshan’s music — illuminated by songs like Put Chunari in my day, What I did, what I learned and Na Toh Woh Karvan — is evocative of the radio days when words and melodies told better stories than images could.
His oeuvre is often overlooked when it comes to discussing Hindi cinema’s most conspicuous musical artists because, as Asha Bhosle and Javed Akhtar succinctly put it, he did not indulge in publicising himself. But his blend of Hindustani classical, Urdu poetry and cadence, and a refined, understated sense of orchestration can never be skipped, so seeing noteworthy voices such as Sonu Nigam, Sanjay Bhansali, Kalyanji of Kalyanji-Anandji and the iconic radio announcer Ameen Sayani (in his final interview before his passing in 2024) offer analyses and compliments feels like a much-needed, heartfelt tribute to the underrated master.
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It is interesting that The Roshans doesn’t retain the the flair and insightfulness of the first episode for the rest of the series, as though each of the four subjects were in charge of their own storytelling approaches. The poetic undertones are abruptly diluted when we reach the second episode, which brings another music composer Rajesh Roshan under the spotlight. The decision not to feature the older of the two siblings, Rakesh, in this episode feels odd, but one assumes that the makers wanted two musicians to be paired together to relay that success, despite all the talent and sincerity, cannot be inherited.
Rajesh Roshan is the composer of every Rakesh Roshan directorial and his discography includes many other chartbuster albums like Julie (1975), Mr Natwarlal (1979) and Kaala Patthar (1979). Yet, there is very little known about the man. The Roshans doesn’t attempt to demystify the man as much as it discusses his career (and pretty much nothing else) as an overfamiliar highlight reel. Popular singers, fellow composers and other credible sources crop up as expected to offer tidbits, but none of them take us close to the man that he is. There are fleeting sparks, though, ranging from his self-destructive drinking phase and the impact it had on his wife and family to the fundamental difference in personality between him and his brother Rakesh Roshan, but they are doused without much thought.
The sheer lack of objectivity
Rakesh Roshan, in Episode 3, comes with a new promise of rejuvenating the show with some life, and his segment does boast a few solid moments. One of them features Shah Rukh Khan himself, who submits that when he came on board Karan Arjun (1995), one of his career-defining films of the 1990s, he felt a hint of condescension for the reincarnation subject. Rakesh Roshan talks about the trouble or the borderline harassment he felt at the hands of SRK and Salman Khan during the making of the film, and the King Khan too accepts that he was out of line, adding that the success of the film has been a humbling experience in his career. It is this level of openness and maturity that The Roshans needed throughout, but once again, the promise is quite short-lived. The rest of the episode makes an effort to define Rakesh Roshan, the person — the outlier in him who didn’t like academics, the failed actor, the hustler, etc. — but the gaze is so all over the place that none of those traits of his resonates with us.
Now, for an actor like Hrithik Roshan, who is still very much in vogue and in the thick of it, featuring in a documentary of this kind is nothing less than weird. It’s like the MS Dhoni biopic, which was made when the cricketer was STILL playing cricket. Shashi Ranjan and the rest of the creative team make a strong endeavour to suggest that he is participating only to complete an important picture — of three generations of a family — and not as a self-congratulatory gesture.
The focus fittingly is on his father, the maverick filmmaker, for a good part and how his gamblings to launch his son (and Ameesha Patel) with Say no… I love you paid off big time.
Everything about this finale episode is about Rakesh Roshan, except that the channel now is his son Hrithik. We also learn a bit about the turmoil the family faced when the filmmaker was shot at in the year 2000, the visionary he is in making films like Koi… Mil Gaya (2003) and Krishna (2006), and so on. But by now, we are a bit too tired of seeing the same set of candidates extolling the Roshans that it all feels a bit vapid — heck, why couldn’t the makers find even one non-filmy friend of Hrithik Roshan to talk about the real person that he is.
Hagiographic films/documentaries will never cease to be in demand, but they require a keen sense of objectivity to be worthwhile. The Roshans is engaging when it tries to challenge itself and unknowingly go against the script, but the rest of the time it is quite one-toned. It has warmth and also the support of the entire top tier of the Hindi film industry, but what it needed was more guile.
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